In the book Mastery by George Leonard, plateaus are frequent and should be welcomed. I’m finding it hard to do so at the moment.
I’m thinking that I may have made a mistake when I decided to focus on long term paintings for a while and do nothing else. Of course my long term figure painting are looking good, I’m working on them daily, so that is a no brainer. But everything else is beginning to slide. I’m starting to see what a difficult juggling act it is to keep all skills at a high level.
I’ll continue with the long term figure paintings but I need to work in other aspects of art, especially charcoal drawings. My performance today at life drawing was dismal. I didn’t get much completed because I redrew the figure several times to get it right. Only several months ago I could draw the entire figure from head to toe with great accuracy in 20 minutes without shading. Now I struggle to get half the figure in accurately in 2 hours.
So, I work, I learn. Time to start doing other things throughout the week or month. I’ll add in the charcoal drawing, and I need to get a still life going as well. Plus I should try and do a landscape every now and then. Maybe a portrait also…
It may take me a bit to figure out a good schedule, but when I do I’m sure it can push me past this plateau.
