the reason some of the most successful
artists alive today are where they are
is not because they have some insane
talent that you can never hope to reach
it's not like their innate natural
ability that's LED them to where they
are today no
it's that they're really hard-working
and Incredibly persistent art is not
nearly as much of a talent as it is a
skill and The more I've immersed myself
in the art community and even worked on
developing my own skill set as a
creative the more I realized that Talent
is essentially completely irrelevant it
just doesn't matter nearly as much as
people seem to think that it does
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those insanely talented and successful
artists are just really hard-working
they just practice more than you do they
improve themselves relentlessly they
make time for their craft and they show
up both for themselves and their
creative practice and as beginner or
intermediate artists we often look at
just the work of the artists that we
admire and how amazing it is how
beautiful and inspiring and like how
that seeing that stuff really pushed you
to get involved in the first place and
then we look at our own work and it's
nowhere near as good we feel crushed by
our own inadequacy maybe you put tons of
hours into it but you're not getting to
where you want to be maybe that
realization that I might never be as
good as they are sends you into a spiral
of depression maybe it forces you to
reconsider your pursuit of art as a
serious hobby or even as a career the
response to this feeling way too often
is that you want the answers right away
you want short-term Improvement you want
to see those results as fast as possible
Right like you want the tips and tricks
the hacks the secrets the stuff nobody
else wants you to know like you want the
answer but there is no speed running
your way to the Top If you want to be a
great artist you have to put in the work
and avoiding the fundamentals things
like color value light Anatomy
composition visual storytelling
rendering avoiding those things
is not doing you any favors it's not
going to allow you to skip ahead of the
line to bypass all that work instead of
skipping ahead you're going to be
holding yourself back
you're going to really resent the fact
that you didn't invest that time when
you still had the chance when you were
still starting out
by really choosing to invest heavily in
developing your fundamental skill set
you are investing in your long-term
future as an artist I know it's tempting
to really want to see those short-term
results as fast as possible to be able
to make the art that you want to make as
fast as you can but
you need to think about your art as a
thing that you will be
continuing and developing and working
out for the rest of your life
and skipping ahead
is only going to hurt you it's only
going to hold you back instead of
essentially trying to find the get rich
quick scheme of developing your art
skills
I'd really push you to think about your
long-term skill set and investing in
that and really the answer to this is of
course to go back to the fundamentals
but that mindset shift from the short
term to the long term will change your
life persistent habits are the compound
interest of self-improvement and the way
compound interest works is that you
don't really notice changes right away
they add up over time in the long run
there will be a transformational change
it's going to be a huge difference but
you have to put in the work to get there
so if this resonated with you I have
something that I want you to try I
created an art challenge so prompt list
that starts today that focuses
specifically on the art fundamentals but
before we get into that what are the
fundamentals actually I am so glad you
asked the fundamentals are the building
blocks of your creative practice of your
skill as an artist it involves value so
your ability to distinguish grayscale
and really the finer points of
simplifying things like simplifying
masses for example then we have color
which is a layer of complexity on top of
value you have perspective Anatomy
composition rendering light visual
storytelling lots of stuff are involved
in the fundamentals there are just there
are so many things honestly and it's
hard to distinguish all of them but this
prompt list is designed to help you
practice everything it's really designed
for deliberate practice it will require
a little bit of studying some of the
terms might not be filming familiar to
you and I would encourage you to really
dive deep into the more theoretical
aspects of like the way that light works
for example or like atmospheric color
shifts as you do these studies they're
not meant to be like Finnish
masterpieces by the way obviously you
can do that if you want to but it's an
educational opportunity basically it's
like a learning experience the prompt
list is really specially designed to
help you focus on the basics the first
week or so of prompts keeps it really
simple in the beginning it focuses
really heavily on value and perspective
before introducing color light and
texture in weeks two and three you'll be
breaking down complex forms into
simplified shapes on day one doing
values phase on day two
Etc week four is more open-ended I threw
in like some more abstract vague prompts
in there to hopefully get you thinking
more creatively and inject some visual
storytelling into your artwork but this
is a totally open-ended challenge feel
free to take the prompts day by day Skip
around do them randomly leave some out
do it in whatever medium you want change
mediums throughout digitally
traditionally I don't care
um as long as you're practicing that's
the important part and that's really
what I want to get you guys doing during
this challenge because it is hard the
fundamentals
um
they incite some Growing Pains I think a
little bit you realize that some aspects
of your artwork are lacking that you
have to work on and that can be a little
bit of an unpleasant experience because
you have
a lot of work ahead of you suddenly that
you didn't realize before but
that's just how art goes you have to
constantly improve yourself and I'm
hoping that
you guys will
get better for the course of the next
month as a result of this Challenge and
that will be a great excuse to practice
your skill sets the finished artworks by
the way don't have to be finished
masterpieces and I actually encourage
that you don't do that because you have
to make so much art throughout the month
keep them simple feel free to go all the
way for a certain prompt if you'd like
to the master studies are a great great
artistic exercise to really put a lot of
effort if you have the chance Master
studies are essentially an exercise
where you take a famous artist hopefully
who's deceased and kind of an art
history Canon someone like Van Gogh
Monet Rembrandt Etc and
you pick one of their paintings to
create a very convincing copy of as well
as you were able you study the color the
composition the rendering the brush work
and
through that you gain a really intimate
understanding
of the way they used painting to
communicate like the craft of it
and you might come away with that
experience with some really great
advancements in your own skill set some
good Lessons Learned
so yeah that's the prompt list I for my
own part will be doing it as well day by
day I think and I will be posting Vlogs
and stuff throughout the month of
September to kind of share that with you
guys like the process of it and I'm
hoping to have a really good time and at
the end of the month I will be sharing
all the artwork that I made and
hopefully showing off some of the
artwork that you guys made too so feel
free to tag me in your posts use the
hashtag study September and also to post
them on our community Discord server if
you don't have social media you want to
post it publicly online
the Discord server is a great smaller
intimate community and anyway I have
rambled for way too long on this topic
and I have done so many takes of this
video so if you liked it thanks and if
you want to watch more click this video
right here and I will see you in the
next one bye guys