Learning to See

Inspiration and practical advice for aspiring realist artists

  • Home
  • About
  • The Keys to Colour
  • Learn with me
  • My Work
  • Contact me

How You Know You’re Improving (and Not Just Spinning Your Wheels)

December 17, 2019 By: Paul16 Comments

I was feeling nervous and unsure. I didn’t want to start.

All my usual supports were gone:

  • I wasn’t working sight size.
  • I was painting into the light, so the form wasn’t clear. And I couldn’t use Munsell value chips to check the values.
  • The subject matter was outside the range of paint – I couldn’t hit the lightest light and the darkest dark at the same time.
  • I just had no way to check if I was getting it right or not, and I was going to have to paint by judging relationships on the fly.

I’m talking about the value practice that resulted in my latest batch of practice studies. Here are a few of them:

It’s not easy to work this way, just out of your comfort zone.

When you push yourself beyond what you’re comfortable with, when you change your usual process, there’s a really good chance you’ll fail.

Painting well is hard enough as it is, so why make it harder? Why put yourself through it?

Because it’s the best way I know to make progress.

The point of practice

Anders Ericsson has been studying what makes practice effective for a long time.

He wrote a book called Peak with Robert Pool. I highly recommend that you read it if you’re interested in the improvement of pretty much any skill.

The central point of the book (and one that’s often missed) is that the point of all practice is to develop ever more detailed and sophisticated mental representations.

A mental representation is just the model you have in your brain of a particular set of skills.

Take driving. Take it for granted, in fact, because we all do.

But when you first started, it seemed impossible to think about all those things at once. Because it is, consciously. So you stall the car.

But gradually, with repetition, the various skills that we need in order to drive become codified in mental models of what we do, models that we invoke largely unconsciously when we drive.

Repetition is not enough

An interesting thing about driving though: Most of us do it a lot. So you’d think we’d get gradually better with time.

But we don’t, we get worse.

The reason is that we don’t stretch ourselves. Once we get to a level we need to pass our driving test, we don’t improve much beyond that.

Repetition alone is not enough to develop a skill further. You need to make it gradually more difficult. As you become competent with your current  level, you need to move on to more difficult challenges.

And that can be scary. But it’s always interesting.

An example closer to home

So I’ve been attempting to apply this to value practice lately.

I’ve done quite a bit of value practice previously, painting cubes and spheres in form light, sight size. I credit that practice with finally cracking being able to paint realistically – to the extent that I can, at least.

You can read all about how that started here.

That practice taught me so much.

I learned about the modelling factors, the spread of values from light to shadow for different value locals (no, it’s not always the same) and I also touched on different approaches to compressing vaues.

I learned about light.

But there came a point where painting more value spheres in form light wasn’t going to teach me a lot more. After a while, the returns begin to diminish.

Levelling up

So to push it further, I’ve recently changed my approach.

These two videos are edited down and pretty short – a few minutes each.  They’ll show you how I’ve been doing my practice lately:

Study 1:




Study 2:




If you want to see the whole thing, blow by blow (I must warn you, they’re long) I streamed them both live on facebook and you can see them here:




and here.




Here’s an added bonus though: As a result of that practice, my painting has begun to change. I hope, to improve.

I haven’t really had to think about it too much – by which I mean I haven’t had to change it deliberately.

I did all the thinking when I was doing the studies, and that change in approach has naturally begun to percolate through to my painting.

I think this is because I’ve begun to develop more detailed and more sophisticated mental representations of value, as it applies to painting realistically.

And that was a lot of the point of my doing this practice in the first place – because I want to move my painting on.

And whilst it might well be possible to do that by just painting, I think there’s a more effective way to do it. I think you can do it more intentionally if you do it in your practice, rather than your performance.

Practice isn’t just painting

So how do you know if your practice is helping you make progress or if you’re just spinning your wheels?

Well, if it hurts, there’s a good chance you’re practising properly.

That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to enjoy it. I do enjoy this kind of practice, although it’s far from easy.

But if you feel nervous before you start, if you’re not sure if it’s going to work out, if it makes you feel uncomfortable – even a little scared – then there’s a good chance you’re doing it right.

I’m not recommending you follow my method. This is what it took for me to go just a little beyond what I usually do. You might need something more complex, more difficult, or less so – depending where you are.

And of course there are other elements of effective practice – taking one skill in isolation (for me here, value), getting timely feedback and repeating until the new knowledge becomes connected to your existing mental model.

But if you’re coasting, if you’re doing what you usually do, then you’re not learning.

The point is to push just a little into discomfort and uncertainty. Then keep going.

Best wishes and thanks for reading,

Paul

The Keys to Colour - Free 6 step email course

Learn how to:

  • mix any colour accurately
  • see the value of colours
  • lighten or darken a colour without messing it up
  • paint with subtle, natural colour

Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit

About Paul

I'm a (mostly) self-taught artist. I paint realism in oils, mostly still life. I share my work, my evolving process and what knowledge I've gained on my own learning journey here, in the hope that it might help you along on
yours.

Comments

  1. 1

    Balta says

    December 18, 2019 at 4:10 am

    Paul, glad you are back. I was worried and thinking about you. Hope you are right. Please, keep sharing your art with us.
    Best wishes.

    Balta.

    Reply
    • 2

      Paul says

      December 18, 2019 at 9:25 am

      I promise I will Balta – you don’t get away from me that easily, I hope to be pestering you for years to come 😀

      Reply
      • 3

        Balta says

        December 18, 2019 at 8:53 pm

        Glad to hear that!! I’ll do my best to learn from you. Thank you again for your generosity! I send you a brotherly, big huge!

        Reply
  2. 4

    Katherine Allsopp says

    December 18, 2019 at 4:27 am

    Your dedication is inspiring Paul. Thanks for sharing

    Reply
    • 5

      Paul says

      December 18, 2019 at 9:24 am

      Thanks Ketherine – and you’re very welcome 🙂

      Reply
  3. 6

    Luke says

    December 18, 2019 at 4:53 am

    Paul, I really enjoyed the post as well as the short videos. I’m working through some particularly challenging painting problems and this line hit home –

    “if you feel nervous before you start, if you’re not sure if it’s going to work out, if it makes you feel uncomfortable – even a little scared – then there’s a good chance you’re doing it right”

    Looking forward to seeing some of your new work

    Luke

    Reply
    • 7

      Paul says

      December 18, 2019 at 9:24 am

      Thanks Luke, good to hear.

      I’ll be postng some new work very soon!

      Reply
  4. 8

    Helen says

    December 18, 2019 at 5:55 am

    Great to see you , Paul! I was wondering how to check on you. . The work you are doing is remarkable! I didn’t think you could get any better but you managed it! Wonderful work, dear friend!

    Reply
    • 9

      Paul says

      December 18, 2019 at 9:23 am

      Wow, thanks Helen! Nice to hear from you, too.

      Reply
  5. 10

    Ruth says

    December 18, 2019 at 6:11 pm

    Thank u for sharing us .wish u luck and keep with your wonderfull way to teach.
    I take a lote of advice from u and try to exersise some technics.thank you….

    Reply
  6. 11

    KATHY A CLARKE says

    December 23, 2019 at 10:09 am

    HI PAUL, Beautiful light indeed! I could not quite hear the name of the artist you recommended we check out.
    Thank you, Kathy

    Reply
    • 12

      Paul says

      December 23, 2019 at 12:39 pm

      Hm not sure without watching it through again, but I think it will have been Bryan Mark Taylor.

      Reply
  7. 13

    Christel says

    December 23, 2019 at 12:21 pm

    Glad you’re back, Paul! This message is so spot-on! Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
    • 14

      Paul says

      December 23, 2019 at 12:42 pm

      You’re welcome Christel, and thank you!

      Reply
  8. 15

    Glenn Williams says

    January 5, 2020 at 8:21 am

    I’m glad to see that you are still making these videos and alls well with you. I was painting yesterday and during a break I was thinking about you and how I hadn’t seen you on YouTube for ages. I thought I would Google and find out if you were OK. And here I am. Hope alls well with you and your family and you have a wonderful 2020.

    Cheers, Glenn

    Reply
    • 16

      Paul says

      January 17, 2020 at 11:25 am

      Thanks Glenn. Everything is good at the moment. Michelle is doing well and her round of treatment has finished. For me, I hav a lot more videos and live steam planned for this year, as well as workshops.

      I Hope you have a great year too.

      Reply

Leave a Reply to Paul Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Affordable monthly online workshops

Learn the Fundamentals of Painting in a Community that will Help You Grow

One month free trial

Find out more

Hi, I’m Paul

I'm a (mostly) self-taught artist. I paint realism in oils, mostly still life. I share my work, my evolving process and what knowledge I've gained on my own learning journey here, in the hope that it might help you on yours.
Read More…

paul foxton logo