there are two artists Bob and Dave both
beginners at the same level dedicated to
learning arts they both practice
rigorously for one whole year spending
the same exact hours of work at the end
of that year Bob gains enough experience
to up his skills by 10 levels and they
buy a shocking 50 well most of us in
this example are Bob I'm Bob you're Bob
she's Bob we're Oh Bob except Dave
Davison Bob so how do we become like
Dave how do we level up five times
faster like he did well that's by
learning the right way to practice
efficiently and to do that we're gonna
use a bit of science to understand why
we practice inefficiently and how to fix
that you see to improve an art we need
to learn and remember a huge amount of
information such as the art fundamentals
mixed with a lot of practice however
with the subject being so complex and
the whole world in itself understanding
and retaining everything that we
practice quickly becomes a difficult
task I mean most of us don't even
remember what we ate for lunch a few
days back so how do we expect to retain
all of the information we have to learn
for art's here's the good news
it's possible I mean think about it we
remember things we learned a few years
back that helps us understand that
information is not learnt in the same
way it's not stored in the same way now
this is where science comes we have both
short-term and long-term memory our goal
is to send all what we learn to the
long-term memory so that we can later
retrieve it when creating artwork to put
it in a simplified and fun way think of
the short-term memory as a place in the
brain that has a few slots to store data
with a very limited space whenever we
learn something the information will
occupy one of these slots now if we keep
on overloading our brains with more
information the data will get dumped to
be replaced by new ones rendering our
efforts in practicing and efficient as
most of it will be lost so instead we
want to make sure that the majority of
what we learned get sent to the
long-term memory to do so there are
three things I want you to stop doing
and five things on you to start doing to
start learning effectively the first
thing is getting rid of all of
distractions and overloading of
information when you are practicing and
learning are
related stuff so no more checking your
phone Facebook Instagram you get the
points the sole focus during a study
sessions should be practicing art and
nothing else the second thing is to
completely stop multitasking as there is
research that shows that daily
multitaskers are easily distracted and
suffer from a poor attention span hence
being less productive and inefficient
the third thing is to stop practicing
for long sessions without taking breaks
in between there have been estimates
that on average the attention span of
adults lasts between 10 to 20 minutes
before it starts diminishing which is
insane so taking a 2 to 5 minute break
every 20 to 30 minutes will jumpstart
your focus allowing you to benefit from
longer hours of practice ok let's start
talking about some effective methods to
commit information you learn to your
long-term memory I want you to start
doing these five things deconstruction
recall self critique quality sleep and
spaced repetition to go over these five
methods let me use the example I gave
you on Bob who got to level 10 after one
year of practicing art and Dave who got
to level 50 in that same amount of time
so I'm gonna explain how each of them
practice differently for this example
Bob and Dave are both trying to learn
how to draw faces however whatever I'm
going to teach you right now will apply
to anything else including any other art
medium such as sculpting Bob spent every
day drawing different faces using
reference from Pinterest he would look
at the reference and draw what he sees
no more and no less
he kept drawing a bunch of different
heads per day and every one he does
occupies one of his short-term memory
slots since Bob ear has two of these
slots he constantly replaces what he
learns with new information without ever
properly storing his previous drawings
in the long-term memory this again is a
very simplified way you Cilla straight
my point that said we can quickly see
how this method is just not efficient
most of what we're learning is getting
mixed and lost slowing down our growth
as artists so let's take Dave they were
smart enough to follow the five steps I
just talked about deconstruction recall
self critique quality sleep and space
repetition let's see how he applied all
of these five steps just like Bob
they've also drew a lot of faces
he however doesn't only rely on
reference he also consciously
deconstructs what he sees either
visually or on paper this is to say that
he is truly putting in the effort and
learning how things actually work for
example he tries to figure out the
perspective of that head how the head
would be in geometric simple shapes how
the skull underneath would look like the
muscles their names their functions etc
they then repeats the same head drawing
without looking at reference to his best
ability to remember what he just drew
this is called recall he will then do
some self critique by comparing
differences between his drawings and the
reference to figure out what he forgot
or did wrong this right here is a very
powerful way to practice as truly
understanding the subject at hand
repeating it through recall then doing
some self critique will create a lot
more impact to the information you're
learning by going through these steps
davus ensuring that whatever he
practices is sustained for a longer
period of time by sending the
information from his short-term memory
to his long-term memory before it gets
replaced by any other information after
a hard day of practice using these three
steps for whatever he draws he will get
a good night's sleep which will help him
properly retain any information he
acquired this now takes us to the last
step
spaced repetition you need to see the
brain as a muscle it needs maintenance
repeating what you learned over and over
again throughout the month and year will
reinforce the information help you
better understand it and also make it
last for a longer period of time so Bob
here even after one year of drawing head
still doesn't truly understand how to
draw one Dave on the other hand has a
very good understanding of heads he can
now draw them better than Bob both from
reference and from imagination and now
Dave is 40 levels ahead of Bob sorry Bob
you didn't lack Talent
you simply needed to watch this video so
let me ask you are you a Bob or are you
Dave let me know in the comment section
below also make sure to subscribe to the
vid subscribe to the channel not the
video give the video a like though and
make sure to share it with your friends
so that you can help this channel out
and before you go know that the signs
that I talked about over here is a lot
more complicated in reality I just
wanted to simplify things in a fun way
for you guys to easily retain the
information and then apply it to your
daily practice routine with whatever
kind of art you create so there are
still a lot of things I can cover and a
lot of different methods that we can you
know learn from science to improve our
arts and I've been really interested in
the subject lately you know with
psychology and how the brain works and
all of that so if you're interested in
that kind of stuff if this video helped
you out and you really enjoyed it just
make sure that you let me know in the
comment section below so that I can
create more of this type of video
anyways I'll see you guys in the next
one so let me ask you okay let okay
let's start talking about some effective
methods to commit information you learn
to your long-term memory
are you a Bob or you date how the brain
works all that kind of stuff mmm alright
so let's review some of the key points
that I talked about throughout this
video so first of all get rid of all of
distractions just put your phone on
airplane mode or do whatever you got to
do to get it done also stop multitasking
in general it's a bad idea and stop
overloading your brain with useless
information now the things you want to
do when you're practicing is
deconstruction recall self-critique
a five minute break every 25 minutes or
so that's gonna depend on the person and
then you want to get a good night's
sleep it's very important that you get
one and you want to do spaced repetition
everything is explained in the video if
you missed any of these points just go
back and watch it again so let me ask
you make sure to subscribe to the
channel for more awesome characters cups
and art related videos you can also
check out my store for full courses on
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brushes and more last but not least if
you enjoyed this video then you will
definitely enjoy the next one
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