Taking your time with art

In my recent blog post, I discussed the practice of drawing every day, delving into the various exercises I incorporated to enhance my drawing skills. However, today, I feel compelled to address a related concept. You might assume that drawing daily involves producing a single, finished piece each day. However, what if we were to focus on gradually constructing a single piece every day? A piece that would take multiple days to complete? What if we added a puzzle piece here and there until it all comes together as a cohesive whole?

At this point of my business and career, I feel like it’s important to transition toward this approach. While drawing something every day has contributed to developing my skills, I believe my abilities would have evolved differently had I chosen to draw every day with the aim of completing a single piece, concentrating solely on the skills I found that I was lacking in.

What can we learn by working on one thing?

I think that when we focus on a single project, we can really analyze what skills we’re weak in. For example, consider the piece above. It is one of my most recent colored works. I feel like much of my daily practice with drawing has gone into character design and illustrating people expressing various emotions. However, when you look at the background, you can tell that I have been experimenting with perspective, but I still haven’t quite mastered it and he coloring of the piece seems pretty cohesive and logical but could be better. Although I worked on this piece for three days, I believe more time could have been devoted to either the sketching process or the editing process before coloring, allowing me to perfect the perspective and angles. That’s where I believe drawing every day can be useful, not just to draw for the sake of drawing, but to draw with the intention of improving skills.

Effects on Artistic Joy

I believe that drawing every day solely for the sake of improving skills can become frustrating and even miserable. Drawing is intended to be a pleasurable and stress-relieving activity, so why should I turn it into an educational pursuit every time I engage in it? Learning can definitely be annoying, and turning it consistently into something that was meant to be recreational can introduce unnecessary stress. This is why I emphasize the concept that drawing and learning can be directed toward a specific project.

We all possess certain strengths and weaknesses. By integrating both into a single project that exercises both aspects, we can enhance not only our weaknesses but also our strengths!

Regarding the previous drawing, my goal was to create a piece for YouTubers that I enjoy watching. I knew I wanted to depict them as characters in my own style, while also situating them in an environment that held significance for them, namely the B&H camera store. Backgrounds aren’t my strong suit, but I’m pretty good at drawing characters, and I am decent with colors. Hence, there were three skills I could work on in this piece, each with varying degrees of proficiency. Merely focusing on the characters alone wouldn’t have brought me closer to mastering intricate backgrounds, a skill I aspire to develop in the future. Thus, the valuable lesson I got from working on this piece was the experience gained from tackling the project as a whole. I do think that I could’ve done better at the background now, but it’s all a part of the learning process. There will always be something in a drawing I’ll want to improve on after it’s complete.

Conclusion

I believe that engaging in the creation of a new piece of art has its own benefits, yet working on a long-term art project also comes with its own set of advantages. I don’t believe that either technique or learning is more important than the other; it truly depends on what you aim to accomplish with your art. Are you looking to produce something quick and simple, such as a doodle or a small cohesive piece? Or are you striving to develop a substantial artwork that showcases a multitude of your skills simultaneously?

No matter your approach, there exists a pathway that can be pursued to achieve whatever artistic goal you have set for yourself. I just want to emphasize what each approach has revealed to me, and I am eager to share these insights with all of you! If you have any questions or comments about this brief post, please feel free to leave a comment below! If you haven’t checked out my previous post about drawing everyday, you can check it out on the blog page. See ya next time!