Your Favorite Artist's Advice can be Wrong

Searching for advice on learning to draw will get you quite a lot of… opinions. And after trying out some of the tips you may find, you might start to struggle and wonder why it’s not working for you. Why does everything seem so wrong?

As I’ve said in earlier clips, every person learns art differently. There are so many different starting points that influence how you see art and how you develop your skills. And when you see your favorite artist online telling people the big secret that they figured out that launched them ahead in their art career, it’s easy to get excited, and then… frustrated when it doesn’t seem to work for you. At all! Adding to the frustration might be the fact that you see other people agree with that artist, and then everyone starts to push that method as fact.

The real fact of learning online is that many skilled artists will be skilled at their craft, but not necessarily skilled at teaching. Teaching something is an entirely different skill set, no matter what the topic is, but it’s understandable that people want to share their knowledge. In teaching art: a big point that gets missed is that their “art secret” was not some specific trick, but a product all of their earlier practice reaching a point where things came together and clicked. To those of you who share your art advice: please keep doing it! But understand that it might be a unique trick that only worked for you because of certain other skills you’ve developed in art.

Even so, there are some universal truths to art. Things like light, perspective, anatomy – these are core pieces of art and not just a way to learn. Very skilled artists can bend these rules to make some clever pieces, but if you’re learning how they work, then they are rules to follow. So you do want to get that stuff down. Don’t write off advice about certain fundamentals just because you want to try to do your own thing. But be sure to have fun as you learn.

Accept the thinking that what you’re doing might be wrong. You might have tried learning one way, and didn’t get anywhere. That’s OK! Be wrong! Be flexible and try the next thing you see. The thing that makes art “click” for you is your own journey, and you will have lots of “wrong” moments finding it.

You know who else might be wrong: me! I wanted to make this video series to cover a lot of forgotten art tips. But even though I focus on the motivation, not every tip is going to work for you. Strategies that keep me learning and drawing might not be what keeps you drawing. That’s why I’m making a lot of videos on this: I hope that at least one or two tips “click” for you and keep you making art.

Art is a creative subject. Duh, right? So there are no fixed rules or a checklist of what everyone does to become an artist. There are tons of suggestions of things that worked for many people. You can consider trying those, but you might also discover a unique way that helps motivate you. When you do, share it! It might help others, or it might not. But that’s OK: go make some mistakes!