Never Stop Learning

There was someone that I knew that was so excited for her first art class but she was quickly disappointed. The first couple of lessons that were taught were on how to hold the pencil, how to draw circles, to make your drawings flow, all the basic start from scratch drawing. Her thought was that she had been drawing all her life so all of this was useless information. As she said it, “I already know how to draw”.

It is so easy to get caught in this thought. In fact, many have fallen captive to this. Shoot, I was once one of these victims. My very first fine arts lesson in college was to draw several circles. Not just a few circles, but a page full of hundreds of circles. The joke that went around my house that first week was that I was going back to Kindergarten. I didn’t see the purpose of that strange art lesson at first but as the semesters went on, the purpose started to appear. The reason to draw circles was to teach us to be fluid with our drawings. This allows our drawings to not become stiff. It also helps us with the gesture of the figures.

The difference between the first time art student and me is that I didn’t become defeated by the thought that I already knew everything there was about being an artist. She was stuck on the mindset that there was nothing left for her to learn because she had been drawing for a long time. This way of thinking constricted her ability to learn from her professors to perfect what she did know. Sometimes it takes stripping down all that you thought you knew about art, to really understand art.

Never stop learning from other artists. Become an art apprentice and learn. Find how they do their work. Is there something that you don’t like about how they did their work? Is there a way that you can mix some of their technique with yours to make the outcome even better? Don’t be afraid to try something new or go back to the basics to improve your own work. Sometimes we don’t know as much as we think we might know. Every artist can find something to improve on or to try. Don’t be upset when someone mentions something that you need to work on. Sometimes it takes another set of eyes to catch what you haven’t seen. You aren’t obligated to take their suggestions but if you keep an open mind, it can lead to something even greater.

Now that you have read what I have to say, go out and learn!