Practice, it Really Does Make Perfect

Practice, practice, and practice some more... We hear it a lot as children, whenever we want, or our parents want us, to be really good at something.  Playing piano or another instrument, or learning a new language, or drawing; all these and excelling at just about anything else, require a lot of practice to become really good.

Often, when told that we will need to practice a lot to be good at something, we have a little internal conversation with ourselves.

Self: Gee, I'd really love to be able to do that, but it will take a lot of practice/time/patience.
Inner-Self: Say what?  And what's in it for me?

Generally our inner-self will have to see some benefit.  Once convinced it's a done deal.  I have been told that guys usually learn guitar, practicing for hours, to pick up girls!  I have known a lot of guys who play guitar and I suppose there may be some truth to that.

Once you decide you'd like to draw or paint, practicing your drawing is very important.  Regardless of what artistic style you embrace, you will need to train your eye to see.  I know the concept of 'learning to see' may be difficult at first.  We learn to see when we're born, right?  It's true that we begin to see when we're born.  But we take so much for granted, we see so much that we don't notice, that when we go to put it down on paper we leave out a LOT.  We need to 'teach' our eyes to see completely, and then we need to 'train' our hand to reproduce what our eye has seen.


Take a simple apple for instance.  Ask a young child to draw an apple and you will see "round and red".  (The apple to the left would be a giant leap for a very young child, given the shape and shadow detail, but I just can't do "round and red" anymore.) 


But there is so much more to see when you view an apple.  See this wonderful little painting by Jos van Riswick.  Jos does a painting a day, calling them postcard paintings, now that is practice!  But look at the detail... he shows how the reflected light from the tabletop lights up the underneath of the apple, how a subtle shade of gray, just behind the 'real' red area of the apple makes the illusion of 3-dimensionality.  The highlight is soft and not a stark white, actually the entire image has a softness to it.  Most people are so surprised to know that humans don't actually see hard lines (even those with new glasses.  We also don't read every letter but only the shapes of the words... weird, huh?)

Anyway, enough drawing lecture.  My point here is to say that to paint something realistically, we must learn to see it, and practicing is the best way to see.  I must have painted dozens of apples in my day, here is a little picture called "Lady Apples" I did years ago,  The finished size is 12"x24".  A year or so before I started this painting I volunteered to teach an adult art class for Baltimore County, MD, and I was nervous.  So I painted about 20 or so red apples as practice.  I had never done this before, and it really pushed me to a new level.  I began to really see ALL of the apple, and also to get my hand to paint exactly what I saw.

So, practice, Practice, PRACTICE... this is the mantra of the week.  If you don't know what you want to draw for practice, just find an artist you like and study his work.  Do a sketch or copy of a painting of theirs.  Copying another artist's work is not bad, so long as you don't sell it as your own idea.

Here is another great blog about practicing!  11 Reasons to Keep Practicing.  Number 11 is my favorite! 

• When you’re on your deathbed, do you want to be able to say that you went to the mall every weekend or that you tried to write a novel?

So, until next time... Practice!
Laura

Visit my website at www.LauraMasonArt.com or search for me on Facebook under Laura Mason Art.