What many art teachers don’t want to tell students
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2024
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This video came from thinking about what many of our students really need in order to improve and achieve the skills they are dreaming of having.
There is a system of practice and a specific mindset that is required to help you master the various technical skills needed for drawing.
Since we always talk about figure drawing on this channel, I decided to use examples from other types of drawing and painting for this video - sketching and painting scenes and landscapes. The ideas apply to figures too though of course. I hope you enjoy it!
0:00 It's About Reps
3:02 Essential technique
7:26 Sketches per hour
9:36 One Step Back
15:24 Learning system - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
“Hard work beats talent when talent won’t work hard” I used to tell my young students when I was teaching. I taught art in a very busy elementary and middle school for almost twenty years, designing projects in almost every genre and really giving myself to general art education. When I retired, I found my own personal skills had deteriorated because I had been so involved with my students. I was tired, in fact. I was apprehensive about becoming a student again myself. It has taken awhile to have the courage to make mistakes over and over-the very attitude I tried to encourage in my students.
Your video has motivated me to keep going when I get frustrated that my drawing and painting don’t flow as they used to. I long for that creative joy again and see that maybe here is my path forward. 30 sketches per hour! Thank you very much and I have subscribed.
thanks for giving so much of your life to teaching and encouraging art, that is such an awesome thing to have done! and i hope this channel can help you with your own artistic endeavours :)
@@lovelifedrawing Thank you, I will try to get over my being afraid of “losing it” and start practicing!
Talent is a pursed interest, so anything you put time and effort into you can become talented in; anything you stop putting time and effort into will eventually stop being a talent.
I needed this reminder to take one step back so you can take two steps forward. It's disheartening to feel like you are getting worse at something when you are learning and applying a new skill or technique, but it is necessary for your overall growth as an artist. Thank you Kenzo!
Guys and girls, who needs Kenzo to pop up in their feed more often? For example 10 minute clip when he says Go drawing! Keep it up! just to refresh all art insecurities
Nobody ever told me I COULD do this. (I'm terrible at drawing.) I would have loved for someone to have said something like this to me years ago, because it opens up POSSIBILITIES. Just having to get better at eyeballing it seems hopeless/impossible. Being able to "drill" it with measurements until the hands remember what the brain did the "hard way" feels ACHIEVABLE.
I had this kind of epiphany with my flute playing a few years ago. I thought it was all talent with some practice. I was never really told it was 95% practice and 5% being given the right things to practice.
@@NatashaEstrada I knew a lot of practice was involved, but I always kind of thought you just had to "see" what to practice or not.
Try reading and doing the exercises from the artists way it's about left and right brain in drawing and never give up you'll get there good luck
The struggle is real. I've finally seen the value of value studies and it's taken me 10 years to get disciplined to do them. I'm mostly into watercolor but over the last 2 years have been drawing daily and you are correct.....repetition and many sketches improves my skills exponentially.
if you love watercolour, value studies are the key!
Yep. Just do the real thing. It's annoying as a teacher or instructor. You want to help people improve as quickly as possible, but sometimes there are no tips, no tricks, no shortcuts. You just gotta do the thing.
A surprising boost of confidence from hearing you talk about your early 30s. Doing commission work from home with my parents at 30 and it's only just starting to pay bills-- it's working, but I feel so late and so many of my online teachers are prolific 21-25 year olds working industry animaton jobs and teaching on the side.
I know it's my own thinking that's the problem here. It's a long journey that doesnt know age, and people aren't living their best lives just for me to jealously compare myself. But imagining trying to submit for jobs or internships at 30 and barely competing at the level of a bunch of fresh out of college 23 year olds... That age gap feels a lot more real and I needed to hear someone talk about growth through their thirties, just a little bit.
I'm in my mid 30s just starting to seriously pursue improving my art skills and back to living with my parents after my animation career froze this year. There will always be young fresh hot talent out there, but you will also be a better artist than other people too. Everyone is on their own journey. Comparison just upsets you and makes you doubt even trying. The only person you need to compare yourself with is your old self. I'm sure you can admire how much you've grown!
‘Reps’ analogy was brilliant, So glad to see you on my feed- with solid advice
It truly is one of the advice you dont really wnat to hear at the begginning. The trick i did to get over this is to turn my drawings to have a lot of sub goals. Did i pass the flip check, did I get my proportion right, are my shape decent enough, is my scale right? All of these as nothing more as a side objective rather than the main goal. The main goal being is to have fun with the little doodads that one has decided to draw. I tend to do it after the drawing bit is done though.
Quick sketches are so good for learning because they allow you to focus on one thing at a time. This makes learning much easier. Great video.
Thanks for the reminder, @Kenzo! Having the mindset of "reps," rather than "I have to make a masterpiece" is something I keep having to come back to over and over again!
I would like this twice if I could. This really spoke to me and the way you explained it is so clear. I appreciate you taking the time to teach us. TFS
Glad it was helpful!
Right- this is a good antidote to the endless videos that proclaim: "No rules in art! Just do whatever feels good!"
I always have a hard time starting things because I feel like I need to do it right the first time.
yes this is a such a good point. this mindset is what stops most people, and if you can be a learner and fail and keep going, that's what separates successful people
I LOVE this entire video. It's exactly the mindset that I discovered for myself a while back, and I've been trying to instill it in my friends as I teach them how to draw. As always, you are such an incredibly clear communicator for these concepts. Thank you for reinforcing the reps!!!
i'm glad it resonated w you! let's do some reps :)
sometimes after one step back i just stop and afraid to take the steps forward. after quit for a long time i'll regret it bcs now it feels like i let myself dragged 20 or 100 step backs. thank you for the reminder!
Shout out to the photographer of that first photo, for getting those widths so evenly distributed across the image, underated skill.
I enjoy doing 1-1 sketches.. it feels like a quite easy way to get satisfaction from a job well done- no creative choices like with personal art that starts in your head, just look at photo and try to copy. I guess I'm lucky that at least that kind of practice doesn't feel gruelling to me
Thank you for your video, the most best information available.
This is such an encouragement - absolutely brilliant teaching. Thanks!
I'm a new drawer and also a weaver and What you said at the end about being ok with it not looking great applies to every art. I put off my arts because I don't like it when it looks bad so I stop. I will take your advice and do a heap of bad sketches. Thanks.
You have helped me so much in learning to love drawing. Thank you Kenzo.🌺
This makes so much sense, thank you!
This is so encouraging! Yesterday I started to sketch a scene from the day from memory, but it turned out all wrong. I spent a good hour or two trying to figure out what was wrong and fix it, wondering if art should feel like working your brains so hard. I guess you can’t avoid hard work…But I do think that sometimes you should sketch freely w/o thinking too much, which I tend to do, you know just to keep it enjoyable 😅
I do lots of studies, but I also sometimes just let it go and paint or draw something from "imagination" and not be considered by the end result. It's enjoyable and keeps things fun for me. Like taking a break, but not completely from painting or drawing, but from practicing. Sometimes I take few days off completely if I don't feel like painting to not getting burned out by the feeling that I have to do this every single day.
Thanks, Kenzo. This video came up on my home page ' out of nowhere', and as I now do a lot of plein air figure drawing ( -not always- rather too often, not very well!) as well as landscape / urban sketching, I'm always keen to learn more and improve my skills. I also teach art, which can very easily, and often does, stifle the tutor's own unrelated-to-teaching creativity, and we need this sort of help and encouragement.
So again, thank you. It's really helpful to be reminded / re-learn and to learn new things, too, no matter how long we've been doing 'this art stuff' (in my case, 27 years). 😊
i'm glad you liked it and thank you for watching!
@@lovelifedrawing 😊
Huge value here! Thank you!
Love this! Need this! Thank you!🙏
I just wanted to say a quick thank you for sharing this information with us. I'm just beginning to learn how to draw, but this video resonated with me on multiple occasions as I was watching it; so once again, thank you for sharing this 😃
Brilliant.....thank you so much for this hugely encouraging video.
This was super super helpful! Thank you
Really good video and really good encouragement thank you!
This was so helpful for me. I feel much more energized to get my reps in. Thank you!
Thank you for this timely video...its something that I needed
Great video, good inspiration. Thank you
I love this man so much. Thank you, king
Beautiful video, thank you so much! :]
Wow!
So good explanation!
The was exactly what I needed🤩Тhank you!
That has been my experience in art school and afterward. I had all the tools, but the one thing I really needed they wouldn't tell me. Though I did stumble upon it and I said to my instructor how I had achieved it, to which he responded "Some people do it that way..." yeah I successful ones! My other painting instructor just sat in the room reading the newspaper all 3 hours. When the model would break, he'd jump up and shoot out of the room until break was finished.
Fabulous session and it has given me the motivation to keep going! Thanks
Excellent advice. Thanks for this.
Thank you 🥺💖
hi from Brazil, thanks for that :") this video makes me relax my mind now, I'm working on it in real, the social media and all stuff on my mind makes me fell crazy sometimes but, in the last days i am having really fun moments doing every strokes :3... However this video helped a lot with my thoughts thanks
Thank you so much.
This was so helpful and informative thank you❤
Thank you for the class! Is always good revisit basics to see where are we catching bad habits and get things straight
Excellent advice. Will follow.
Fantastic advice , thank you. Regards from England.
This was an awesome video and I relate so much, I too have an awful time with proportions and measuring things!! And no worries about me doing ugly sketches coz it's all I seem to be doing lately ahaha Thank you for sharing =)
Lovely - I don't have to like everything I produce. I do have to learn from what I do. Thank you.
You are an awesome teacher!!!!! thank you a lot :')
9:13 thank you for clarifying that, because I literally thought "oh, he's gonna say to do it either way"
Not being afraid of drawing something that looks bad is something i realised recently and am trying to change but it's really hard 😂
it might be the hardest skill of all!
Love this advice!
Excellent advice
Great advice
working faster is really good for improving. and more fun as i am learning.
if i spend hours on something that i don't like it's no fun.
if i spend a few min on something "boring" that even becomes fun! :)
i think that's the most important thing for learning. being able to learn in a fun way!
but i do need to get out more. have not done any outside drawings this year and now i'm too cold and my fingers will just become icecubes if i try to draw outside 😆
in spring or summer i will do it again!
yes i also need to go outside to draw a lot more than i have been. just as with you, i've waited until winter to come this realisation!
I needed this
Excellent point and I keep forgetting it. I’m still trying to make every sketch super detailed so I’m not getting that important practice. Thanks.
Wonderful video. When I teach a class I start by asking how many took an instrument in school. Did they expect to play in the orchestra the next day, week, year? Why not? Talent comes from wanting to do something so much that you're willing to work. Unless you're Mozart, and he was what, one in a billion? Or Da Vinci, Monet, etc. etc.
Absolute right. Draftsmanship seems taboo with many, maybe most teachers and workshop artists.
Gotta get in the reps man 💪
Yes it’s not just talent!
Actually it’s 99% not talent, as talent is a natural aptitude. It’s mostly studying and practicing, like most things are
@@roggos3668 love it, you are inspiring me to get back to drawing.
@@roggos3668 People learn faster than others, that's talent
I love this video, it was very refreshing to see your words get backed up with progress photos of your landscapes throughout the years. Do you have any resources on landscape painting process? Something that helped you get better? I'm currently practicing values in landscapes, but would love to tackle colour, shapes etc.
the guys teaching me is Jared Cullum who has a youtube channel - one of the nicest guys ever too which is a bonus
@@lovelifedrawing Thank you for the info!
“Do 50 drawings and measure proportions” 😊 Yep, that’s definitely a message for myself. I get really close to a good image likeness but the proportions are always a bit wonky.
Im really not interested in values. But after i saw this, i wanna try photoshop, 8 or 6 gray scale filter... im not fine art so i think it would work. Watercolors lights and shadows have more contrast than actual scene.
You're right
nice!
I think better than telling someone to just practice more is to tell them HOW to practice. You'll get nowhere doing the same thing over and over. Focus on one body part a week, do studies on just that narrow focus and try to learn something new about the shapes or anatomy. Then bring it back out to the wider composition. Even disproportionate figures will look good if the proper construction is there.
It also helped me to break up the body into torso, arms, legs, then put them all together.
you'll NEVER find a discipline in which you can improve without having to put in an extreme amount of repetitions and self critique in order to get good. art ain't as tiring as sports but it ain't any less ruthless
Could you talk about atmospheric perspective sometime? I really like your teaching style and feel like I get a lot from your explanations
Very true. Measuring proportions helps shape your perspective. Your brain needs to become accustomed to the truth, not the fantasy. Thank you🤔😏😊 for this video.
Hello: Thank you this is very encouraging; please let me know why in time set of the video 3:21 you decided to start the Basic Perspective you started with the diagonal of the building then you found the Vanishing Point in the head of the person. Is there an ideal place in an image to start the Perspective?????
the lines of convergence from a simple boxy form that is parallel to the ground plane are an easy place to start
The problem is that I for example have never quite understood how to measure. Would love to measure but I go insane trying to measure things with my pencil and then trying to calculate how big to make something based what I have already on my paper. Addition: in art class I usually simply pretend measuring😊
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."
ha! that's a nice spin on the cliche
It’s always about the fundamentals and the reps. I would be suspicious of a teacher who doesn’t want to tell a student that.
The painful process of growth. I’ve definitely given up along the way due to lack of commitment to the practice. I hope I find the motivation to return again.
i hope so too! although, i think it's best to not rely on motivation. motivation is a weird thing that comes and goes, like an unreliable friend. better to depend on your actual values
@@lovelifedrawingthank you 🙏
Great video, I really enjoyed it. I would love to join your study group, but sadly I couldn't care less about humans and feel absolutely no desire to draw them. I am learning to draw to one day be able to do justice to my dog, and given the differences in anatomy I don't think human figure drawing will be all that helpful. Or will it?
i think if you want to draw dogs, best to focus on drawing dogs. you could try peter han or joe weatherly for good teachers of animal drawing
@@lovelifedrawing That's what I thought. Thank you for the names! (TH-cam doesn't seem to understand what I am looking for...)
listen i dont know if you will see this comment or not but,i have been stuck in figure drawing for maybe more than a year now but when i found your channel everything changed,i love art and everything to do with it and almost quit,but you helped me and gave me hope,if you see this i only want to say five words, may God be with you.
that's great to hear!
thank you for everything
@@lovelifedrawing
Hello ! Was the picture taken in Montpellier ? Thanks for video
it was in bordeaux - we had a lovely time despite the heat wave
@@lovelifedrawing Happy that you had a great time in France , the heat wave was unbearable ... Horrible ...
Practice, practice, practice. Nobody is born with talent. I hate the word talent because I know it's all hard work.
quoth the teacher "lol wtf go practice" but the student pondered the words instead of listening to them ✍
and then quoth the old art student "lol wtf i should have practiced"
You sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger he’s all about reps as well ;)
yes i have a lot in common w Arnie
Bro you have so much good info in this vid, but adding some quiet background music and breaking up a video of your face with some examples of what your talking about would rlly take this video to the next level, and make it more watchable.
Thanks for the tip!
Yes. Good point. In many ways it really is that simple - put the hours in. Graft away at your weakest points. Nobody wants to hear it though.
For me, I don't think it's that exercises sound like too much hard work? They just sound so BORING to me, and I don't know how to get past that they seem boring.
the skills they give you aren't boring though!
@@lovelifedrawing That's true! Some day, I'll get myself to do them more.
Fifty? Wow, that's really, really gentle. Chuck Jones used to say, "everybody has about 10,000 drawings in them and the sooner your get yours out of your system, the better it will be for everyone." Let's be REAL here. It takes about ten years to truly master a complex creative skill, like dancing ballet or what have you. For the visual artist, you should be sketching daily plus doing about 20 substantial drawings per week for a decade to get to mastery.
Does that mean you won't be able to create anything you enjoy in the meantime? Of course not! From the beginning, you'll be having fun and seeing some good outcomes. You'll just get more and more consistent as you approach that threshold of mastery and when you cross it, bad drawings will be a thing of your past.
"For the visual artist, you should be sketching daily plus doing about 20 substantial drawings per week for a decade to get to mastery. "
Hmm. Hey, here's a scenario: "I have a full time job, and am mother to two children under ten. I don't have the finance for paid help with the household chores, so I do it myself. The children need help with out of school activities, homework, and learning how to take care of themselves. I grab what time I can after the children are in bed to do my art stuff.
Now another scenario: "I'm an elderly person with disabilities. I live alone, so it sounds like I have loads of time. But it takes me about five times as long to do those basic activities of daily life as it used to do. I can't afford help, and Social Services say I don't qualify for home help, as they see I can do it for myself. It's not just tiring. It saps my energy. It's exhausting. But I need to take care to do some things 'for fun', so I grab my art stuff and get to play for about half an hour on good days."
Now in either of these scenarios, taken from Real life, by the way, and many others who have so little free time, but who want to learn a new skill that takes them out of their busy world for a few minutes when they can: This guy comes along and says to them, "For the visual artist, you should be sketching daily plus doing about 20 substantial drawings per week for a decade to get to mastery."
And any one of them will respond with variations of this scenario: "Oh my word. How do I respond to that? What world is this guy living in? Is this supposed to encourage me????? Well, for sure it doesn't!!!!! It leaves me feeling pretty pathetic / furiously angry / totally discouraged, / wanting to take him by the scruff of his shirt and give him a taste of Real Life, and what we achieve for ourselves in those few minutes a day which we grab to practice and play and _enjoy_ the *fun* of this 'out of my normal world' new skill."
Hmm...I think I'll stick with Kenzo's more realistic targets! Much more doable and a lot less pressure, and even some fun as well as some progress over time. 😊
i'm glad it helped :)
What a wonderful video! Thank you so much for pointing out these important details.
AND .... let us also pay attention to pronunciation as well ....... the word "DRAWING" has only one "R" in it. It is correctly pronounced "Draw-ing ..... not "Drawr-ring".
So many people, even excellent instructors on youtube, make that mistake, but when it is heard spoken that way, the effects are like the saying " nails scraping across the blackboard". Do we not owe it to our beloved art to pay attention to this as well? ❤😊
I'm so sorry to mention this but, when the 'marker' underlines something, it sound like slurping or someone sniffling their nose. Apologies again, but; maybe change it? Otherwise great vid.
ha thank you! I'll let Rita the video editor know your feedback
There are no rules, draw whatever you want. Rules are imposed by people who have come a gone, they are no more insightful than any of us.
First
Every course tells you to practice, no point to this video