I really needed to take time today to collect my thoughts and write down my idea of teaching myself while teaching others. So most my art day was spent writing and looking at the big picture of my training.
I have three Artist Perspectives I’m working on. The Art Spirit by Robert Henri, The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides and Figure Drawing for Artists by Steve Huston. Plus I have a bunch of ideas on how to provide helpful content for other artists and myself.
But first I need to see how this all fits within my current commitments.
My art practice and Fandom Fitness drawing are the most important at the moment. But the Artist Perspectives I’m writing seem just as important because they are providing me with a ton of insight and learning. Then I have to add in my regular job, daily workouts, spending time with my family, meditation, Optimize.me learning and time to eat.
Needless to say my days are PACKED!
The only way to make this work is if I set the correct expectations and relax the schedule for completion I’ve placed on myself. It’s all about the journey to mastery.
I’m using the Artist Perspective writing to really dig deep into books that will help me as an artist. I try to extract every ounce of learning I can from them and distill that knowledge into a post on my site. Along the way I hope to learn a lot of skill from them also.
Although the only way to learn from an art book, to know the wisdom by heart, is to do the work.
I’ve already learned the best way to be an expert in anything with the greatest velocity from Peak by Anders Ericsson and now it’s time to put this knowledge into practice.
From now on if I begin reading an art book that doesn’t already have any in-depth exercises, looking at Figure Drawing for Artists by Steve Huston, in it I’m going to create my own curriculum of learning for the book.
Multiple times I’ve heard from teachers that they have learned the most by teaching others and this is what I hope to do. Of course I don’t have a class of students to teach to right now but that doesn’t matter I’m going to teach to my website as if I had a class with me.
My plan is to create this curriculum and try to follow as close as I can to the principles of deliberate practice. Then once the curriculum is done for the book I will publish it online for anyone to follow. Or maybe I’ll publish a bit at a time. I’m not sure, but it will be on my website at some point.
I can’t help but win from this. The only obstacle is my motivation to stick to this for years and to let go of my current idea of publishing Artist Perspectives with more regularity.
Now, on to today’s short art practice session.
I spent about an hour today drawing just a few figures, taking my time and trying to see the entire body as simple forms.
The daily sketch today was done very quickly, that is my only excuse for the horrid set of dumbbells that I drew.
The daily composition is supposed to be a man relaxing under a tree at the park but he looks like a pregnant woman. Haha, I need to practice A LOT!
Lots of writing and getting clear on some future work.
Practice taking it easy on myself. I don’t need to spend 4 hours every single day on art. 2.75 hours a day is just as great as long as it is deeply focused.
I have the tools to do something really great with this website, I just need to stick with it and keep working every day. If there is something that I do have going for me is the ability to stick with something every day for a long time. Hopefully I can teach myself while teaching others during the process.
