Yes, of course! The main ones are: - How to Draw and How to Render by Scott Robertson - Landscape Painting and The Landscape Painters Workbook by Mitchell Albala - Colour and Light by James Gurney - a totally different book also called Colour and Light by 3D Total - Drawing Form and Pose by Tom Fox - some anatomy books by an artist called Propic Taco which are in Korean and English - Anatomy for Sculptors by Zarins - Rediscovering Gouache by Aljoscha Blau - Beginners Guide to Digital Painting by 3D Total
Finally someone who goes about applying nueroscience to art! I've been trying for a long time to apply some of the principles of meta learning to making art but finding examples of how to do so has been like searching through a wasteland.
Yep there's very little out there apart from people just saying what spaced repetition is as if reading from a textbook. That's why I started this channel though, so hopefully we can increase awareness of neuroscience and then see where it helps! Thanks for your support!
I've been learning art fundamentals with Spaced Repetition systems for years now (as a professional artist) and with Anki since about 1-2 years. Especially for anatomy / character art it's extremely helpful. So I definitely agree with your theory here.
Ooh, that's very interesting to me. Do you mind me asking how similar the way you use Anki is to mine? I haven't met anyone else who does this and would love to get your input on how you do it!
@@10.000hrs Mainly I use it for anatomy studies / repetition (like only words on the front of the card "triceps back view" and the image with details on the back of the card) and studies of artworks (from my favorite artists and new ones I find on occasion). For the "procedural parts" I have not included book / course pages like you (at least not yet, now I am considering it :D), but I concepted similar challenges covering studies for the art fundamentals as well as imaginative drawing from memory and drawing using the testing effect (just quickly looking at a picture on the front side of a card, then trying to drawing / constructing it from memory, then checking in with the card again etc.)
@SandraSuesser Thank you for responding. That sounds like a great way to practice. And I am glad that you feel it has helped you develop. Interestingly, Kim Jung Gi learnt to draw a lot of things like you describe, by looking at a subject, drawing with no reference, then looking at what was missing and trying again. There definitely seems to be something to all of this, but it is not taught at art school to my knowledge.
OK, I have a lot to say about this now that I am a professional artist with and a self taught artist. First of all, This shit is amazing! Great video, great insights, Amazing progress! I'll need more time than I have to study this vídeo to see how I can apply some of this in my life. Amazing stuff. That said, there are a couple of things I need to point out. ~Aesthetic is not a Fundamental~ Working with something is not Learning something. Although we need to learn art (be it fundamentals or the abstractions) to work as an artist, most of the skills we learn through art training is considered "Implicit" skills. No one will ask for them, you have to have them. But the Work is not having the skills or using the skills by themselves; The work is something else, we just need to use "Art" to do the work. A easy way to express this is "Every job in Art has an Aesthetic or a Aesthetic expectation to it and we need to do This specific Aesthetic to This specific Job" I'm not talking about Style, be it cartoon or Realism (not right now at least, because they are a style in other contexts), I'm talking about the deliverables you are expected to deliver in a project; If you spend countless hours learning art fundamentals and art techniques and whatever other concepts you want, You will learn the concept but not how to apply or use it in the context of the work. Regardless if you know the pipeline of work you want to do. - I'm not saying it's a waste of time to focus on one aspect of art for any reason, everybody needs to do that from time to time, and some people are just passionate about certain things in art. That is normal and OK - Where am I getting at: It is a really good Idea to focus your output to a single aesthetic that you want to learn or work with; How you do that? Let's use (Overwatch's [Project]) (Concept Art [Deliverable]) as an example Perspective day 1 -> Study the concept as is Perspective day 2 -> Perspective in Overwatch concept art Perspective day 3 -> Study the Concept as is and try to convert it to Overwatch's Concept art Repeat You will quickly notice that the thing you are drawing has many applications outside of the Aesthetic (Project + Deliverable) you are trying to learn, And you will notice that The Aesthetic you are trying to learn has it's internal rules. This will give you not only the mileage and the cumulative experience with the Art fundamentals you will be training how to percieve and apply it to the Aesthetic you NEED to know in order to get a job. ~My Experience with Interlieving~ Interlieving only happened to me after 10 years of art practice. I have no back up information for this, besides my experience, but Interlieving in Art needs more time to happen. Probably becuase It's practice needs to result in abstract information that can be manipulated instead of concrete information that can be used; That puts art in a very odd place. Because while you can try to learn a couple of subjects at the same time to force interleaving, you will only be able to do that after you aquire enough knowledge in one area in order to make associations with another area. And some fundamentals have no correlation until you get to the advanced stuff But if you do blocked practice for too long (What I did) you will get absolutelly nowhere; It's actually stupid. How I solved this issue was doing something the majority of professionals and more experienced artists tell us to do and we dont: You need a Project. When you have a project, let's say: Draw a Furry OC. You can look at the impossible large list of things you need to learn and reduce it to the few things you think you need to learn to do the project. Give yourself a timeframe (1 week to 6 months) Study everything you think you'll need for that project and DO the project. Doing it like this Forces your brain to reavaluate what was really necessary and this causes the Interleaving to happen. "Oh, I needed to draw the shadow shapes before I stated shading...but to do that I needed to do the blocking correctly, that why Value needs a Shape to exist and why Edge is done lastly" Things like that don't happens often enough If you don't have a Project (or an Aesthetic) to self avaluate. ~Having a project is about studying a Aesthetic~ The last thing I want to say is: If you want to work with art, train the things you'll need to execute the job in the same visual context of the job. You need to learn Academic realism to do cartoon? It will help a lot, sure, but the Realism exercises you are doing are just exercises, what counts it's the stylized drawings with the applyed knowledge from the realism studies. You want to do concept art? properly rendering multiple materials and such is a requirement, but the job is about shape language. >>Focus your training into aquiring and applying the skills to the work you want to do>Make projects and milestones in the same Aesthetic goals you what to achieve
Woah, those are some amazing insights! That's exactly the sort of stuff I was hoping people would comment because I simply do not have the mileage to appreciate things like this, so thank you so much 😊 I just draw for fun really so in that sense maybe I'm not really seeing this stuff from the POV of someone who wants to get employed doing concept art (for example) which means I have a blind spot! The parts you mentioned about having a project make a lot of sense. I have some experiments lined up for future videos that I might have to treat as you have described to see what I learn from that. In meta learning that would potentially be described as a 'stake', effectively a deadline, that is something I have not covered yet in my videos. I find that as I learn more, the knowledge does overlap and your understanding of something you THOUGHT you knew well changes, which I think you were describing as well. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment, I will take on board everything you said.
@@10.000hrsThe Project is something more complex than just having a deadline. There are some core skills that are not fundamentals that we need to learn like "how / when to finish a project" "how to avaluate a good idea to paint" "how to choose between ideas to finish" "What is the focal point to this particular project and how should I emphasize this and not waste time on stuff that's not important but needs to be in the project" This abstract (advanced) components can only be studied while you are doing the Real thing this forces you to apply everything and see all the fundamentals together. This is the fucked up part. The fundamentals can be trained in isolation but for you to understand why they are fundamental you need to apply them together to a tangible project to trully understand them and get used to dealing with multiple abstract concepts at the same time in your head. Example: I am a comic book colorist; If I try to color a page, panel by panel. First value, than hue, than saturation, First my focal point than the background. I will never be able to see The Whole page. My planning is The whole page first. All of the hue, value saturation, composition, lighting, storytelling, everything at the same time. Than I go back and Refine each panel, each value, each hue to mach the vision I set out to do in the planning. I think this is why books work much better to self taught artists becuase they explain the concepts as they are applied ratter than just exemplifying them. Something courses or youtube videos lack when they are presenting the idea for the sake of time.
@ThiagoCRocha-fh6lg ah okay I got it, sorry for misunderstanding. So would you say that in short it's learning how to use the individual components together as a cohesive unit? And the best way you have found to do that is with a proper project like maybe making your own character design?
As a fellow artist, (not a professional) one thing I have found is that interleaving may happen sooner when you constantly try to do everything at the same time (e.g. color, value, composition). This is very much my own experience, because ever since I started learning art, I have the tendency to abandon structures and methodical approaches. And I don't recommend it, it puts a high strain on your mind and energy to focus. High risk, high reward, basically
Sounds great! Let me know how it goes. I have been wanting to make a 'master study' deck where I regularly paint from works I admire but haven't done it yet.
This could be a game changer. I’m just now overwhelmed with the prospect of making the flash cards - which books, how to create exercises from these etc. it would be interesting to see more info on the actual content of the cards and a more thorough break down on exactly how to approach your own learning material and develop cards - it just feels a bit like the overwhelming task of working through all the training material is now replaced by overwhelm on how to make the flash cards! This channel is no.1 though in offering a real life method for people who have other commitments 👍🏻
Thanks for your feedback! I can appreciate that this all seems highly intimidating for those new to this sort of learning. I am working on a deck that I want to make available for people so they can try those out for themselves which I hope to release before the end of this year, alo gsode a discord server to help manage it all. It will all be made available for free, and I'm trying to get it to logically lead you along a progressive route to building specific generic skills, which I consider to be the most important things I have worked on. Thanks for the interest and for following along 💕
interesting watch, I've actually started using anki for concepts/word meanings I find in drawing resources and the idea of using cards to challenge yourself is one I'll keep in mind for future reference.
regarding efficiency, my reaction is that while you may make more progress per time invested by studying 1 hour per day, let's say in the 1st hour you make 100 progress points, in the 2nd you make 60, and in the 3rd you make 40, in that day you've made double the progress. It may be less efficient, but more effective. Of course this depends on the real rates of diminishing returns and how much recovery time is needed in order to know the sweet spot, but I'd hesitate to encourage people to draw less than they might want, especially since certain paintings require significant time investment and would take months or years to complete at such a rate. Good video, so much to think about! Cheers
Thank you! Yes, the sweet spot you talk about is around 30 mins for me, and then I take a break. The 1 hour limitation is actually more because I have a full-time job and so can only commit to an hour a day! I have to make that hour count, so this method ensures I focus on the most worthwhile stuff in a way that should make it stick. I'm glad you enjoyed it. There is indeed a lot to think about!
There are also things you learn about how to regulate yourself and pain points in how you are working that really only come through sustained efforts. If someone thinks carefully about their experience with longer work sessions, it should both show them distinct problems (eg. sore wrists from gripping too tightly) and provide the incentive to actually fix those problems.
Its super creepy, I was just thinking of doing this 2 days ago and suddenly this video pops up with a way better way of doing it then I was planning. Great video
Thanks, glad you found it useful. I had so much success with Anki for other things. It took a while to find a way to make it work for art, but I feel it has helped me.
I’m using anki for language learning, but I never thought that you can use it for learning drawing. Thanks! I think it will help me a lot with keeping drawing routine
You are very welcome! It's a little different, but if you are already familiar with Anki, I am sure you will figure it out quickly. Thanks for watching!
I'm rewatching this with more attention this time, and I must say the thought you shared about spaced repetition someday becoming the norm is exciting and beautiful. The "gains" for everyone would be insane and it's exciting to imagine what new ways to learn could be developed in the future. Anki helped me a LOT internalizing Japanese, so I'm very willing to try this method out, especially since I've read multiple good art books but would like a better way to manage the knowledge they offer (the handiest tactic I've developed is Highlighting/ bookmarking sections I consider important in books in PDF format, I had no idea you could do that in any modern PDF reader.)
I think it needs more research, which is beyond what I can do, but if I can at least make others aware of it, then maybe more research will be done. I really think that learning how to learn is like being given the instruction manual for the brain, and makes achieving life goals far easier. It should probably be how we are taught from a young age. I will share with you that I experiment with a lot more than art. I started a couple of years ago chopping several key 'must read' books, and self help books into small batches and use Anki to frequently reread and make notes after the captured excerpt. It's amazing how rereading books like this over time changes your understanding of the subject. You end up reworking and refining the notes you initially made, and each card becomes a deep dive into something. It's like note-taking on steroids, and all scheduled for you, so you don't have to remember to reread periodically. The only downside is that it's slow. You take a long time, slowly working through a book, but ruminating on it probably far greater than 99% of those that ever read it before. For self-help books, it's almost like a form of therapy, and once again, I feel this could hugely benefit certain people with things like confidence issues. I even wrote a challenge on each card like I do with the art cards to ensure the subject is being practised, and the feedback from that goes into the notes too.
I’ve been thinking about this for guitar and drawing. I use Anki for studying work stuff. I will play around with your ideas and see what works for me. Thanks for the video.
Nice! It's definitely different, and you have to be careful not to overload yourself bringing new cards in, but I think it works. It forces you to really scrutinise what you are doing more so than using it to study something like a language, for example. I'd love to know how you get on with it!
I really admire your hyper logical way of approaching art studies. Your drawings turn out very nice and the realism and subjects you choose really highlights your inner artistry even if they're done in the name of academia!
This video essentially brought into light what I’ve been learning recently about art but could never put into words. You’ve earned a sub for me because I’ve finally found a resource where it has a clear objective on how to find the direction for an artists journey (imo). A solid stepping stone and I’ll definitely keep an eye on your content. Thank you so much for your video.
Wow, I like your sientific aproach, never saw anyone who would study art like that! Now I wanna try that too. And I'm difinetly waiting for updates on your journey!
Thank you, thats very kind of you to say. Just play around, see how your brain best learns things, and experiment! I found this method useful, because I can progress at a steady pace and really get involved with my learning very deeply. Some people prefer to tear through new content as fast as possible! Neither is right or wrong, just gotta learn about yourself 👍 Thanks for your kindness and support 💖
I've probably been using anki for over 5 years for academia, but i never even considered using it for something like art. Incredible! Thank you for sharing this.
No problem! It's pretty much the same idea but I think it's a slightly different type of knowledge acquisition and retention because it's essentially skill based. It's not as simple as learning a word and reviewing it. It's more like reviewing and practicing a skill for a good hour or so, making notes on the card, and picking up again next time.
You are 100% right about studying for 8 hours a day is not going to help you. I use to manage 3-6 on average (No seriously) a day around a year ago for a 6 month time frame. I got super into it and just wanted to get better and basically dedicated everything I had only to realize most of it was a massive waste of time. -Drawing all day with intent just puts stress on your brain and your cognition will tank by hour 3 -Its not realistically sustainable and you will destroy your life -You WILL burn out and burn out hard wasting weeks -Its way better to do a few pages a day step away and then evaluate your work the next day then it is to make the same mistakes with 100 pages. - When you're starting and finding it hard to commit Its way easier mentally to set aside an hour or 2 with no phone or tv then it is an entire day. I get way more mileage out of doing morning reading, draw what I just studied then put it away. 1-3 hours a day studying 1-3 hours drawing what I want so 1 hour study 2 free drawing or project or 3 study 1 hour of free drawing.
That's a really fascinating insight. Thanks so much for sharing it here! I love hearing from others who have experimented like this and learned what works for them! I have spoken to professional athletes and musicians about this in the past, and even they say that when it comes to actual skill development, little and often is the key. Seems that human tendency is to just want to overload and go nuts, but the actual brain just cannot sustain it. People don't like the comparison because the brain is not a muscle, but the biological processes that wire up the neural pathways only occur when you are NOT doing the activity, usually while sleeping, so it's the same problem as someone who works out for 8 hours a day trying to get buff faster. Not gonna happen.
Recently Ive been questioning if there is a stable livelihood down the road, but for now Im just going to keep learning and working on my art day by day.
Thanks! It's helped me, so I would be interested to see how others find it. Just don't go crazy with adding lots of new cards to study at once, or it quickly backs up and you end up with like 10 cards to study on one day. I will show how to avoid that in the next video.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank You THANK YOU!!! I've been looking for this video for YYYEEARRRSSS. Ever since I took psychology I've always wanted to find the ways I could best use my brain to get better at art, and like you said there's not a lot of info out there so thank you :)
I'm very happy you found it useful! The next video will go into a few more things related to this, like how to avoid getting a backlog, and how I scan books, stuff like that.
What a great concept. I feel like I'm getting in at the ground floor of something special. I'm glad I clicked on the random "my art journey" video that ultimately told the algorithm to point me towards one of your videos as part of, I guess, my "learning to draw" content phase
Ah thanks! That's so nice of you to say! It's all a bit of an experiment but the techniques I use seem to be something that people find interesting. They aren't for everyone but I really feel they made a difference and helped me accelerate my development. Nice to have you following along, and I wish you well in your learning my friend 💕
This is incredible , i do something similar but I’ve always found it difficult to keep track of my repetitive training, so my skills fall off. I think i need to make something of a schedule to keep track of so i don’t forget.
Anki is great for that! It helps you regularly review things so you don't have to worry about remembering when to study, you just do whatever it tells you to work on that day. Play around with it and see what works for you! ❤️✨️
Thank you for this video! It's a very interesting topic to me, *how* to study. I think the biggest takeaway for me is the most important thing is finding a method of learning and practice that works for you. I definitely want to take some of these concepts and try them out myself. Thank you for sharing! 😊
Ah, that's cool. I am super pleased you found it useful. Yes, I think you have absorbed the most important lesson of all, which is find what works for you, and try stuff out for yourself to see what parts are useful. Good luck with your studies!
thank you for sharing the knowledge! I hope I go to your level soon, and that sweet sweet art quality I aim for. This video is like a reminder not to be lazy or skip a drawing a day.
Yes, constant daily progression seems to be an important thing to aspire to. Even better if you can fully immerse yourself in the learning and work on something specific that session. I am glad you enjoyed it and thankful for your support 💖
Wonderful and interesting experiment. I think it's a topic well worth exploring.Thanks so much for sharing your approach in such logical and detailed manner! Stumbling upon content like this that shows just how superbly different, and at the same time similar we all are, it just makes me grateful to be alive at this particular point in time.
Haha, thank you very much. I like the philosophical line of your thinking. It is amazing to be able to share things with random people, and for us all to appreciate different approaches to learning.
What an intriguing topic to be used in drawing. I have a hard time implementing study methods, as sometimes my study sessions end up just organizing myself really, with no real study. Indeed, it happens not only for drawing, but for my masters studies. Recently I have been more successful and I wish to implement things like Anki slowly in the process. This was eye opening in that sense, as I can see my efforts for learning valid in many fields, be my masters at economic or at drawing. Thank for your effort on composing this video, it is really dense but well put. I look forward to watching more content. If i could ask for something, is a reference list for this video as I got interested in the many books you went through.
Thanks so much! Spaced repetition would indeed help you learn economics or anything else academic. A lot of med students use it too. There is an r/anki subreddit which might have more info for economics specifically. The next video will be about some of the pitfalls of this, like how if you circulate too many new cards you can develop a backlog, and I will make a video all about the books and why I chose them as that is the most asked for thing. In the meantime the main books I use are: - How to Draw and How to Render by Scott Robertson - Colour and Light by James Gurney - another book also called Colour and Light by 3D Total - Landscape Painting and The Landscape Painters Workbook by Mitchell Albala - Drawing Form and Pose by Tom Fox - Anatomy for Sculptors by Zarins - the anatomy books by a Korean artist called Propic - Beginners Guide to Digital Painting by 3D Total
@@10.000hrsThank you for summing it up! One thing I enjoy is making the cards, which you said you did. It seens very pedagogical to look for material and understand what can become a card, I've tried importing cards in the past, but I droped it pretty fast. Nonetheless thank you for making this content, it was inspiring.
Thanks for such a detailed video... I've been creating a new artwork every single day for the last 4 years...gonna try to incorporate a couple of the points you mentioned in this video... THANK YOU!
This is BRILLIANT! Seriously, you could make this into an academic research paper - I know I'd read it. I'm familiar with Anki & spaced repetition but never thought about how to combine that with my artistic practice. A tip for your gouache studies: try using as few brushstrokes as possible to create the shapes. If you look at the orange dog study in the card, that artist uses quite distinct squarish/rectangular blobs to shade. This A) makes it more visually engaging and B) prevents the gouache from getting muddy. As you said, gouache is super easy to reactivate, so you really want to limit pushing it around. Also, the biggest revolution in my gouache paintings was when I worked from very thin to very thick layers, and gave each layer time to dry completely before moving on. Let me see if I can find the video I watched on this & link it here; it totally blew my mind. Gouache is a difficult medium to work with at any level, but especially as a beginner - I seriously commend you for your effort. Thank you very much for this video. I've been in a rut both creatively and educationally (I've been teaching myself art since middle school, and I'm halfway through my English undergrad). This has inspired me to go at it from a fresh perspective! It was the kick I needed to get back into my groove for sure. Edit: Found the video I was thinking of! "How To Layer Gouache - Dos and Don'ts" by Ogygia Art ua-cam.com/video/z2rLCfAyXCg/v-deo.htmlsi=NLq_rVIICB6TE62w
Wow, that's a great video. Thanks so much for sharing your experience with me! I definitely have been keeping the level of opacity the same, even as I progress with darker layers, so will give the opacity control a try next time. I'm glad you found my video useful, I have a huge deal of admiration for people like yourself who have been consistently self-teaching to improve over such a long time. You are very dedicated. Especially while also working an under grad! Good luck with your studies!
This is absolute GOLD! The actual drawing examples are cool to watch... but would be nice to go into the mechanics of setting up a sample deck /card in Anki. I tried once but found it a pita to set up my own decks, confusing & with zero help. Whereas using published decks (for language in my case) was easy. Don't forget the constant drip feed of caffeine & carbs, the brain fuel for any journey of inspiration...! The reason spaced repetition works is SLEEP. Your brain consolidates each day's stimuli. So good sleep is vital.
Thank you. Excellent points.I will try to cover some of that in my next video to help make things a bit clearer. Haha, yeah, it is amazing how much sleep is needed. And the food. This is all effectively a biological process and to reinforce neural pathways needs all that good stuff as you say.
never considered to use Anki for learning to draw, but immediately understood some benefits it could bring. I will start to use it. What is not clear for me is how are you making the repetitions rates given by Anki work since you are using just one to two cards per day
I am just winging it with the repetition rates as Anki is designed for declarative learning. I find that early on you need to probably train a card every day, and some you get good at quickly, while others take a long time. I tend to always pick the second button, treating the knowledge as being difficult, because that seems to make a card appear every few days for the initial learning period. Because I spend an hour on a card, and can only study for an hour a day, my progress is slow and I cannot always circulate new cards, but that's all I can manage right now. If I look ahead and see I have more than 1 card due the next day, then I will be beginning to develop the dreaded Anki back log. The saving grace is that some cards I have studied for a while now I am can do very easily, so I might spend 5 minutes on them as a warm up, and set them to easy (button 4) to shoot them off into the distance. I have to very carefully consider how well I think I am doing in the concept a card deals with, and work around that. The algorithm that Anki uses might be totally wrong for this, but if I can build awareness of it, maybe someone more qualified than me can design one that works better, but honestly I think that the science behind the algorithms themselves would have to advance first.
thank you I have a deep understanding of drawing and stuff. But i am humble and work to find my limits. I want to continue my growth. Just drawing will not get me there. This is the discipline that i needed. I will try this for leveling up my oil painting and getting a deeper understanding of figure drawing. Then any other area of growth I need.
Sounds like you have a good ability to reflect on yourself and improve, which is really the most important thing. I have no doubt you will achieve your goals ✨️
I'm very happy I found ur channel. This video for some reason has motivated more than anything else to try getting back into art. Can I ask, for Anki are u customizing the easy to hard buttons in some way or just using the default settings? Sorry if u already stated this explicitly somewhere but I just started with Anki and am wondering if the default setting makes sense for more of the lower level skills
Haha welcome! I am glad you found the video useful. I am not customising the buttons, I just use the defaults that Anki uses. Anki is designed for a different sort of learning, so honestly the buttons can be taken with a pinch of salt. The reason I always hit the 'hard' button, number 2, is that it makes the card show up very often in the beginning. Some cards I have practiced a lot over the last few years I now hit the easier buttons for, so they show up less often. You just have to play around with it, and you can always reschedule a card. My next video will cover some of these points and show how to do them. Most importantly if you you are just starting out though is to not go TOO crazy with bringing in new cards, or you develop a backlog. I only bring in new cards when I have a sufficient gap in the schedule, but as I say I will cover this next time! It's just a useful way to track your learning and give yourself a routine. It's very flexible and I think honestly everyone should adapt what I show to make it work better for themselves.
Thank you for amazing explanation, this open my mind for different way of learning and different perspective of it. I will be expecting more from your channel❤
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed it. I will show more experiments in the future, so hopefully I can continue to produce content that you enjoy and fund helpful ❤️
Thank you so much! It is always so intresting to see different people's approaches and thoughts, I'm so happy that I've discovered your channel today. As a student I do work witn Anki a lot so definetely will try to use it also for art. Wish you all the best!
Hello and thank you for your cool idea! I've been getting into art for 5 months now and I have been looking for something to make my practicing more consistent! So I will definitely try this! :)
No problem, I'm so glad you found it inspiring. Yeah give it a go and see what you like and don't like. The only thing to watch out for is the rate you add new cards as you can end up with a backlog of cards in the schedule, but I'll cover more about how to deal with that in the next video.
I actually tried a method similar to this although I had no idea at the time that it was called spaced repetition and I didn't use Anki, just a notebook with a schedule, and I burned out hard. Of course it may be because I did stuff wrong and unintentionally overworked myself, but I tried to keep my study sessions to 2 hours/day max and after roughly 3 months of doing this every day I just began hating the process itself even though I saw improvements. Now I mostly do art for the enjoyment of it and only do studies pertaining to the piece that I'm working on. I'm definitely not improving as fast but I'm having fun and don't hate the process.
That's good advice! If you go nuts using this method you will absolutely burn out. My 1 hour a day works for me, but is mostly enforced by my life, job, etc. Gotta find what works for you! There are so many different ways to learn and they seem to work differently for different people. I am glad you have found what works for you!
Do you do thumbnails to test out shapes & colors first? Very useful and less time investment but good at training yr eye and less about good and bad results. Also using tracing paper can be helpful. Gouache can be unforgiving. Watercolor is easier imo.
Thanks friend! It's worth a go! The next video will cover some more of the best practices and things to watch out for like ending up with a backlog of cards.
A good way to practice color and value is to have a lighting/atmospheric color that imparts itself onto the local color of your subject, and then a floor or other object that can impart a reflective color onto the subject where light is bounching between them/rim lighting. This will quickly improve understanding of color theory as youll be practicing value alongside color mixing and seeing how the different palettes work off eachother. It also helps break relying on your symbolic understanding of what an object "should" be and gets you focused on seeing colors as they are and how they interact with eachother. You could do up a bunch of spheres where you wash with the atmosheric color and then use the limited palette of the three chosen colors to render them, changing the palettes between spheres. I work traditionally with gouache so I recommend that so you can get a more intuitive sense for how colors mix. Digital mixing tends to skew oddly and needs some color theory to fix thats complicated for a beginner. Like you mentioned with the focusing 80% on keeping the ball under your feet, a lot of the technical stuff to render color digitally goes from complex to second nature when you've gathered rhe implicit knowledge of how paint colors mix in traditional media. This is a really great video and I wish you well! Youve got a really good thing going here
Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I really appreciate it! I will definitely try those out. I haven't even really worked any digital stuff in at the moment for that reason. It also seems you need a lot of knowledge about how the program works too which I lack. I think the point you made about breaking your expectations is something I am starting to appreciate. Even working from photos, I have to really look at what colours are actually in there and consider how I will mix them.
This is so cool would you consider sharing the deck? (edit: nevermind i finished the vid lol even if you cant share the deck this was a really helpful vid!!
I'd love to watch more videos about your learning processes :D I'm self--learning as a hobby and your videos have been very insightful thus far . I'm interested in what you have to say :DD
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed it. I have some more experiments and insights planned for future videos so hopefully there will be more for you to enjoy and try 😊
Hey, this video is amazing! I really enjoyed it and wanted to share a few thoughts. I'm deeply interested in utilizing metacognition for learning, as I believe it enhances efficiency across various domains. I'm not an expert in psychology or animation, but I've found these insights incredibly valuable. Regarding some of your definitions: Procedural knowledge isn't about creativity or abstract art-making; it's characterized by a systematic process or sequence of actions. For example, if I'm an animator with a specific workflow I consistently use, that's procedural knowledge. This workflow might range from a step-by-step plan for drawing figures in space to organizing layers, files, etc., for a director. I think you might be referring to explicit and tacit knowledge, which are crucial concepts. It's not that declarative knowledge isn't useful for art-it is-but it shouldn't be the highest priority. Explicit knowledge is easily articulated and formalized, while tacit knowledge is personal and context-specific, often challenging to convey. It's intuitive and provides insights that are hard to explicitly explain. Creativity, I believe, is a blend of all these elements. Here’s what this might look/sound like: Explicit knowledge: "Hey, to enhance the animation's fluidity, focus on applying squash and stretch techniques to the face. The greater the force and speed, the more impactful these techniques become. At the highest velocity, you'll want to distort the form to this degree." Tacit knowledge: There’s a common saying that used to frustrate me (and you’ll probably hear a lot too): "Feel the rhythm of the characters' gestures/emotions and let it flow through your hand." It took me years to fully grasp this. I can try to intellectualize this concept, but it would be quite lengthy. To become a professional artist, one of the most vital skills you can develop is problem-solving. You'll face dynamic challenges that require inventive and flexible strategies. Right now, what you have is excellent for practice, but it lacks the "how" and, to some degree, the "why"-essentially, the "play." While practicing the fundamentals, consider engaging in projects that apply what you've learned to solve real issues. You'll find that starting with a blank slate can be daunting, but it forces you to think creatively and problem-solve effectively. Metacognition is particularly valuable for honing problem-solving skills in art. It can significantly enhance your learning and creative processes. You'll want to leverage this for developing critical thinking skills, fractal thinking (which involves scaling from the big picture to detailed aspects), creating frameworks, identifying key ideas and their interconnections, chunking information, and more. This approach enables a deeper understanding and more structured application of artistic concepts. Okay I don't think I can send links in youtube comments, but if you type Effective Art Study Guide.pdf you'll find it in the first link. It's on scribd. Draftsmen podcast and Volen CK are good ones to check on youtube as well! Just wanted to say, keep this shit up man. I love seeing people think outside the box on things.
Wow thank you for such an insightful and knowledgeable comment! I really appreciate you taking the time to explain all of that so well. I am certainly no neuroscientist, just a passionate enthusiast, and so I am always keen to learn more from others. The point you make about having a project to work problem solving and creativity skills is actually something a few people have mentioned, so I am going to have to bring in to my work somehow.
This was very interesting, I am considering implementing this into my studying habits however I do have one question. If I go back to the foot ball analogy where you said they spend 4-6 hours a day just practicing the fundamentals if I continue on that theme when would the coach decide that the players need to add a new skill into there repertoire? If you always work on the same skill sure you will become the greatest ever at perspective but if you don't know how to draw a person or another object in perspective then you won't ever gain anything else. How do you decided to add a card to your deck, and when you add a card to your deck do you try to learn it a little bit before you add it to your deck or do you just add it and learn it when you see it the first time? Hopefully that makes some sense. Love the video Cheers!
Thanks for your comment. That's a great question. The football analogy is a bit loose. They practice that stuff more as a warm up, and then you are correct in saying that they train based on, usually, who their next opponents are, perfecting set pieces and strategies, as dictated by a coach. However, younger players at academies would spend much more time on developing the fundamental skills to the levels that are considered essential for advancement at that club. Most of us are probably at that more junior level in art terms. If you consider your perspective example, imagine that learning perspective by drawing boxes is your start point, but you really want to draw the human head. I learned perspective from the How to Draw book. The anatomy book I use, which is Drawing Form and Pose by Tom Fox, actually talks very early on about how every figure should be drawn in perspective. When a card from that book asks me to draw the head, I have to remember everything I have studied previously about perspective, which I have now studied enough that it's a built-in reflex. I draw it automatically with no need for a grid and so can concentrate on what the head looks like. If I had never learned perspective or was jumping straight into drawing heads, then I would be having to wrestle with learning perspective and anatomy at the same time! It's a much harder ask. The heads I draw would likely be wonky. The issue is not the anatomy, but the perspective the anatomy is in. As such, the fundamental skills, which I cover in my video on skill pillars, is always what I try to improve at first. When I feel confident, I work on something else. The time this takes varies. I think perspective alone took me a good few months and I still make mistakes. I have a limited schedule, so I look ahead and only add cards if I have none due the next day, and typically only allow one a day, which is actually annoying because it slows me down, but it's all I can manage. If you add new cards every day, you can end up with a backlog, but Anki does now warn you of when this is likely. Let's say I feel I suck at drawing feet, and want to improve. I will find a card I have on the foot and bring it into circulation. I just find the most appropriate one, usually the simplest one, which might involve drawing the masses of the foot. However, I would not bother learning to draw feet at all though, until I felt I was good enough at perspective, because perspective > the foot in terms of a return of investment for my practice time. If I can draw in perspective, I can learn to draw a foot, and that is the easiest order to learn these skills in. When I prep the cards I am reading the book pages essentially, and writing the challenges, and I prep maybe a dozen cards in a subject I want to improve in at a time, so you could consider that pre-learning the material I suppose. I find that when I start learning a card, I have to tweak the challenges sometimes, and the notes I take on them help me with this, so everything is flexible and open to being changed. It's very much a feedback loop based on my growth. I hope that helps. If there's anything else I can help you with, please let me know. My next video will cover some of these points in more detail.
Hairdryer can mess up your paint as it blows too strong. You can get a heat tool, mines called Ranger craft it heat tool and was about 20 quid on sale. Its very hot though so move it around alot while drying your paintings. Drys the paint alot quicker without the worry of messing it up with too much air blowing across the page. Game changer for watercolour and gouache painting!
I never would've considered this method to be debatable honestly, it's what I've almost *always* heard from someone that got into college, built a career, acquired a skill, etc. Hell, it's how me and my sister got into college haha. I think ppl who train for so long in a single day and succeed at learning are definitely doing things right for them, but *most* people definitely aren't like that. Some of us are wired towards certain lifestyles, and when you use effort to take advantage of that, you can go really far. It just so happens those are the people we hear the most about haha
That's amazing, I love hearing stories like that. Well done to you both. It's definitely something that needs scaling to suit your lifestyle, which is why having Anki as a scheduler is so helpful, I think. Just gotta play with all this stuff and find what works for you.
I am implementing a very similar approach, but instead of digital anki cards I'm designing "pages" that I can print out and keep in a three-ring binder. Behind each page I have a sleeve where I can store my attempts at the exercise over time to document my progress. I like having a physical book that I can flip through at any time. Just seeing these pages while flipping to another page is often enough to keep the information in the forefront of my mind. Thanks for sharing your method! This video helped me see ways to improve my pages and what sort of information I can add to them.
Aw man!, this is so cool. I totally understand why you wouldn't share other's creators content. But could you share at least the title's cards so we can base off yours to create our own? im totally lost when it comes to using anki. I'd even pay for just the tiles haha
I am trying to come up with an Anki deck that features a lot of the exercises I do and consider key to my development in a non-plagiarised way that I want to make available later in the year. A big part of the cards is making notes on them so each one is like an omgoing experiment you dive back into when it next appears, so I encourage making your own cards, but the ones I intend to make will encourage this and have space for it. I'll try and get them out before the end of this year! Thanks for the interest! They will free BTW.
I'm definitely going to get to work making an Anki deck over the summer. Do you have any extra tips for how to make them the deck? Especially for the tasks/ challenges.
I have a video on making the cards which might help which is part 2 of this video. I make the challenge based on what the book page is trying to teach. So if it's a page on simplifying the figure down to boxes then I make that the challenge. I might update or change a challenge over time as my understanding of the subject grows as well. In general, as yourself: - what lesson is this teaching? - how can I practice this lesson to try and experiment with it?
Recently I've been looking into the concept of 'memory drawing', where you basically try to memorize how to draw a specific work by another artist or a reference image. I'm gonna try and use Anki to systematize that and see what comes of it. The idea would be to put a prompt on the front for a certain part of the drawing, such as 'sketch of Goku pose xyz' or 'anatomy for the right arm of Goku pose xyz' and then at the back have a traced version of the image to compare. I'm curious to see if and how that would be helpful
Sounds interesting! I am sure it would work. I have a similar idea for producing studies from master's works, quite common in art schools, or as a way to try and ingratiate some of a particular artist's or illustrator's style. The only thing I would add is that I spent a long time copying anime and never got good at drawing it from imagination by all that copying. It took me going away and learning how to draw using things like perspective to make the biggest difference, but don't let that put you off. Everyone learns differently and I still like to sit down and just copy from my fave manga books now and then. Thanks for watching 💕 let me know how you get on!
Thank you for your explanation, I really like your approach. There is one thing I don't understand though. Don't you have to first work through the whole book before being able to learn with the help of Anki cards? If I just tackle a random concept in the middle of an educational art book I maybe won't be able to understand what is being taught. I didn't study the previous concepts on which a concept in the middle of a book may be based on. That means I have to work through eeeeevery book you mentioned before being able to use Anki and spaced repetition effectively, is that right?
Thanks! You can reposition any card in any deck to make it the one you introduce as a new card. That means for anatomy books, I can circulate cards on feet or hands or whatever from any part of the book, and cherry pick whatever I want to study. My next video will show how, but it's the 'Reposition' option when you right-click a card in the Browse page. Just set the card's number to 0, and it will be placed as your next new card!
have to admit this wasnt the usual "how to draw anything in 1 minute!" bullshit video I thought it would be. there is definitely truth to not just drawing things aimlessly but to actively recall later. the most helpful daily practice for me has been drawing basic forms from reference such as cubes and cylinders from reference. it benefits my ability to draw anything either from imagination or reference tenfold. I learned that my drawings are only as good as my ability to draw confident lines and convincing forms in perspective. of course shape, gesture, design language, etc are important but they are secondary to those fundamentals.
Wow, thank you. Those are some great insights. I think you are right, it seems that having a solid understanding of how form works and being able to draw it convincingly goes a long way towards being able to draw anything. I'm glad you've found things that work well for you and help you achieve your goals!
Well for the workout example, Generally more like 2-3 hours a day is best unless the goal is specifically to train endurance. there is a major learning component, but rest is also important in working out. And having a few intensive days and then strategic rest days is valuable, And that sort of is seperate from the general idea of space repitition early on. (Until spaced out further.) Da Vinci specifically praised studying from nature, He had a quote I don't fully remember about how when artists only study those who came before they end up not bringing new elements. I partially but don't completely agree that less is more. I think that faster focused iteration is better than fleshing out really big things. Except potentially when a lot of small things go into the bigger work. It was common for the old masters to have 5 or 10 studies that went into making a masterpiece. And some people can get stuck in simply trying to brute force making more and bigger stuff, And don't end up making enough stuff. If you only make 1 or 2 peices a week, without studies going into it, Then you aren't getting much iteration. But if you have 10 or so pieces that are less than an hour and feed them into something bigger later the larger amount of iteration helps more. I do think 1 hour a day is better than like 8 hours on the weekend and not practicing during the week. From my understanding of spaced repition, in the ideal case, you want to have more frequent review and development early on and then space it out. So ideally, you would spend more than1 hour on something spaced out within the same day, Then spread it out more. Like Do 1 hour in the morning 1 in the evening first day. Then 1 hour the second day. then maybe no day 3, 2 split hours on a new concept. And then on day 4 do 1 hour for each of the concepts/practice areas being worked on that week. Day 5 could be a new intro, Or could be reviews of concepts from past weeks. Day 6 would probably review both concepts from that week. And day 7 could review stuff from previous weeks as well. That pace would give 2 new concepts a week, and allow practicing 4 things from previous weeks. (Presumbably after week 3-4. Concepts could me moved from weekly to biweekly perhaps.) etc. Of course the time you spend reading and scanning the card is a form of upfront study, It isn't upfront practice. That would land at about 8-13 hours per week, Which is pretty sedate. And not many more than the 7 hours from a strict 1 hour per day. Of course, I think that principle could be expanded even further with a broader ratio if you wanted to. You could do 3 1 hour sessions in the first day. Or 2, 2 hour sessions. It was pretty common for professional musicians to spend 30 min. to 1 hour practicing scales or other peoples works before going into a session of improvisation or trying to compose something from scratch of their own. I like the excercise element of using anki, Although more generally I feel like spaced repitition is a bit overrated. Because memorization is in my view overrated to skill and intuition. Being able to remember a specific formula is important but a lot less so than being able to use it. And the context and ability to analyze a story or historical situation matters more than memorizing the dates. Now you do need to look at the dates in context. And I find things like timelines. And taking a whole bunch of relevent or related events on one to be useful. that sort of thing can be put in a discrete unti like a flashcard, but then it is acting less as a quick test of memory and more of a quick reference or tool to remind you to do a specific exercise. Which is great, but you can't go through as many in most cases. (Although some excercises can be don in 30 seconds or 5 minutes or so.) If they are that fast, then you lose out to focus switching. And in my view it might be better to just iterate on the same excercise for longer.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience! I agree with you that spending maybe an hour in the morning and another in the evening would be better, but I sadly have a hectic job and can only do 1 hour a day currently. I think that's good for the experiment though because it represents an average person who has to manage life and learning at the same time. I also agree that spaced repetition is better for the more declarative things you mentioned. My interest is whether a similar algorithm can basically encourage myelination to occur inside the brain in the most efficient way possible when deliberately practising a skill in a highly focused state, only when the algorithm tells you to do so. In future videos I will discuss this more and how I also experiment with things like diet, exercise and sleep to encourage this biological process. I'd love to see a study done to see whether this approach is more efficient than dumping say 8 hours a day into learning the same thing, and I hope someone smarter than me carries that out some day 😆 I just want to raise awareness of it.
Yeah, I got a job too. I have been trying to learn to do oil paintings recently. Since I only did digital, markers, and pixel art for colored mediums in the past. (And a tiny bit of acrylic.) It's been going well, but it is a bit harder to iterate. I have been doing digital stuff almost every day and making a 1-2 hour oil painting like 2-3 times a week. Usually on Saturdays or Sundays I make 2 paintings in a row sometimes three. In like a 3-4 hour session. I think I probably should spend a bit more time practicing drawing so that stays sharp and perhaps improves. I spend a lot of time studying drawing, pixel art animation, and ink rendering in past. And I have totally done like 4 hours a day regularly for months. But that is more a student in summer vacation pace than normal working person pace. Currently I am technically averaging about 1 hour a day not counting weekends. But usually doing it as 2 hours every other day. But once things settle a bit I might try to get it to where I alternate between 1 and 2 hours a day, or maybe even get a soild 2 hours. I can't easily split it up though, since I already wake up at like 5:45 or earlier for work. Except maybe if I can get it to where 100% of my dinners and lunches are meal prepped. And but time during the week by more weekend time. When I first started drawabox I tended to do it for like 1-3 hours a day. Which is when I started being really systematic about drawing for the first time. (Not that I hadn't studied stuff like perspective and 3d forms a bit before then, just not in a disciplined deliberate practice way.) And i would usueally do 6 to a dozen repeititions/variations of an exercise on a page and generally got like 6-30 pages filled with practice exercises in each session then. And composition, figure drawing, and face proportions, face angles, and face lighting are also things I found fairly interesting to iterate on quickly in multiple mediums. (Sketch, 4 value monochrome painting, black and white pixel art, etc.) -Using simple shapes and silhouette and placing and layering them differently in differently shaped frames. -Experimenting with arm and leg positions, etc. -experimenting with different exaggerated ways of simplifying face shapes. Triangle shaped heads. Square, more simplified circles. Noses higher up on the face, tiny foreheads. Big foreheads, Pointy chins. Eyes further or closer together, etc. -Taking two lights on a stand and taking a ton of photos from different angles or orientations of the lights Then making really simple greyscale paintings of it. @@10.000hrs
Wow those all sound really solid exercises to do! I'll definitely try out some of those! Sounds like you have a routine that works around your life which is the best any of us can hope to achieve when we work and stuff. Good luck with all your studies! And thanks again for sharing all your experience, I learned a lot from reading your comments! 💖
Really enjoying this too - biggest question I have is that it seems you already have a decent amount of drawing practice (I watched the earlier videos where you went over your sketchbooks). Where would you start for a new artist who is at square zero?
Thanks so much for watching and taking an interest in this friend! It sort of depends on what kind of art you want to produce. If you want to get very good at capturing reality, like drawing landscapes or portraits, then you can get into stuff like observational drawing, where you accurately try and capture the subject by measuring lengths and angles of the figure or whatever, and transferring those to paper. If you want to draw from imagination, then those skills are not necessarily as useful, and you might be better off getting into things like perspective so you can start to draw imagined forms in a convincing way on paper. For the more observational artist, there is a book called Drawing Course by Charles Bargue which is very old, but essentially tells you everything you initially need to know to get good at capturing the things around you accurately. There are probably breakdowns of the book and it's teachings online. For imagination stuff, which is what I do, I found the book How To Draw by Scott Robertson to be a fantastic road map to teach you the basics. It does take a little while to pick them up. Some people also rate the website Draw A Box very highly, which takes you through a lesson plan to teach you these basic skills. Of course there is also nothing wrong with your live for art just being limited to copying your fave comic characters or whatever, and just having fun doing that. I think having fun is the most important thing of all, but realistically if you want to reach the upper levels of this craft, then the academic aspects discussed above will be needed. Hope that helps, and I wish you luck in your learning 🙏 I would like to put together something in the future to help people in your situation, so hopefully I can be of more help going forward.
@@10.000hrs Thank you for such a thoughtful reply! I am in the overwhelmed with resources stage right now. I'd like to draw from imagination/concept art style (my biggest inspirations are John Park - his style, Robot Pencil, Ahmed Aldoori, Terryl Whitlach, and Kim Jung Gi). I've looked at courses like Syn, Brainstorm, CGMA and while I like the idea of a more structured approach to the overall content, the methods these schools seem to use is the "brute force" approach of pour hours in. I don’t have the capacity for more than 1-2 hours per day right now. I taught at one of the top coding schools in the world for a few years and we practiced a very similar methodology (I'm a huge Barbara Oakley fan) to what you're doing here. Spaced repetition, interleaving, etc. Lots of mindset work too. Our students regularly ended up at companies like Microsoft and Google after only coding for 6-9 months. At this point I simply feel like I have too many materials (I have the Charles Barge as an ebook, along with Scott Robertson's 2 books, a lot of the 3d total catalog, James Gurney books, Loomis books, other books, and then several online courses from various places like Art School and Schoolism, Aaron Blaise, etc.). I think I've done myself a disservice by overloading resources without a plan of action. I'm currently working on the drawabox to simply start somewhere. And while I'm feeling like my basic linework is getting better, I'm not actually drawing things interesting to me. It feels like all drills with no play. (I'm using an iPad Pro with Procreate since it felt like an easy place to get started and my desire is to work digitally). Very open to any feedback on a course of study and since you're looking to create something more beginner-oriented I'd love to be a guinea pig. I can record videos of myself starting at square zero if that helps and following along with the suggested curriculum and study. My overall goal is to be able to draw creatures, characters, weapons, landscapes from imagination. To play and have fun. Let me know your thoughts! I’m happy to chat more. I've watched all of your current videos and taken notes on methods. -Nick
@nick.fredman Sounds like exactly what I did. I was overwhelmed. There are a lot of resources out there for sure! I wouldn't know many courses for total beginners honestly. Proko is the one a lot of people would probably recommend. They have some good foundational stuff. The rest I have found to be a bit more singularly focused, even over on places like Schoolism. They seem less suitable for total beginners. I started by copying my favourite artists, and when I tried to draw like them without any reference, I totally failed. It's a completely different skillset. So we clearly need to go away and learn some academic things like how perspective, colour and light work. Spaced repetition works in my opinion for learning this, but because it's slow, you really have to streamline what you study to make it the most relevant stuff, it seems. I personally still think the Scott Robertson books contain the most efficient and applicable things to train to get to Kim Jung Gi levels (he taught John Park too) but it clearly takes years of training. KJG also spent a lot of time studying from the world around him, building a visual library. That's another thing we need! I think as long as you have started with something like drawabox, you will at least be moving in the right direction and can steer yourself more towards things you feel you need. You seem like a smart dude, so I have no doubt you will be able to self inform your development! The drills are important, but I get that they feel stale and not fun. I often try to work them into being fun by doing things like drawing toys or robots or motorcycles because I love the designs of those things. If you compare it to music or sport, there will be times you have to put in hours doing scales or sprints to master a specific skill, but then you can still put time in just jamming, or playing a match where you get to have fun and see the payoff. You can drill the fundamentals less over time once learned, which is what I do, but there is always something you will be working at! Good luck with it, and please let me know how it goes. I'll notify everyone when the resources I am working on become available so hopefully more like yourself can get to where they want to be faster!
@@10.000hrs Perfect thank you - I went ahead and revisted Proko (he has two pretty comprehensive courses now on drawing and digital painting) - I grabbed both of these and Ahmed Aldoori's course there too. Will work through them and report back! I'll probably do Scott Robertson's book afterwards :)
Yes, of course! I have captured many, but the main ones I work from are: - How to Draw and How to Render by Scott Robertson - Landscape Painting and The Landscape Painters Workbook by Mitchell Albala - Drawing Form and Pose by Tom Fox - Colour and Light by James Gurney - Colour and Light (same name) by 3D Total - Rediscovering Gouache by Aljoscha Blau - the Propic Taco anatomy books - Beginners Guide to Digital Painting by 3D Total - Anatomy for Sculptors by Zarins Hope that helps. Some are available as ebooks, and some must be bought physically.
So I have one question: I have been drawing on and off for almost 3 years at this point but during that time I drew very scarcely and I might have only improved like 10% during that time frame on the sole aspect of my motor skills. Only recently have I began to practice in a somewhat thought out schedule (for around 1 and half months now) which accomodates different art fundamentals like linework, form, shapes, etc. So my question to you (or any other well informed person on this subject) now is that, should I, as a relatively new consistent practitioner of draftsmanship, try and re evaluate my practice schedule/approach to better accomodate the meta learning concepts you talk about on this channel? Or should I try to keep this schedule simple enough so that I actually stick to it and dont quit cuz of the added complexity? It would be worth adding that I have the analysis paralysis problem and often overcomplicate the planning part so much that I compromise my execution and repitition parts. It also leads me to often get overwhelmed.
What you practice is most important, so if you are working on things like form, that sounds like a great start. I think it's better to stick to the consistent practice of this relevant stuff, like form, so if what you are doing works for you, keep going! I suffer from analysis paralysis too. If you find a good book or course, it should break down what you are learning into easily managed chunks that you can try and build one at a time. I like to use the cards in Anki to make notes about these chunked concepts as I go because I find that helps me personally to review what is working and where I am failing. Something as simple as note-taking and reviewing at the end of each drawing session should help gently introduce you to meta-learning without overwhelming you. If it works for you, cool. If not, try something else. That's essentially what I have been doing for years and have ended up here. I feel I make progress faster than the days where I used to sink hours into drawing anatomy from books, yet then be unable to draw it from imagination when the book was not around. Good luck! If there is anything else I can do to help you, please let me know.
I've considered using anki for spacing discreet drawing skills, but I have worried about what the review buildup will look like if I don't pick really small skills. I was imagining more like drawing basic shapes and small exercises. I appreciate your ideas. I'm gonna make a calendar reminder to revisit this after my upcoming vacation. It's not a good time for me to start a new SRS journey right now.
You are absolutely right. The schedule can build up, which is why I am very careful about when I add new cards to study. I will cover this more in the next video. It definitely takes a bit of trial and error to find a workload that fits your life. Fortunately, I have had to adapt it to work with my 1 hour free a day for this learning, so I have found ways to bring the workload right down.
Nothing helped me more than just getting lots of (very different) comics/artbooks and copying them cover to cover (or at least the best drawings that fit my taste) but that's just me! There's definitely professionals with your mindset, but they often have a very "rule following" look like ModernDayJames or Proko. It's appealing and well executed, but I can't see this approach creating or inventing an exciting new style. Of course im in the 8 hours a day grinding camp, but i am a professional so it has worked despite being (extremely) inefficient, admittedly. Good video though, we're all wired different, I appreciate your approach as i also have an interest in neuroscience since I'm autistic. Alot of being a professional is becoming about having a clear taste. Fundamentals will get you into the realism/photo copying market but as far as more imaginative work, you need a unique perspective with flavor and lived experience.
Thanks for sharing, that's really interesting! Always like getting input from pros! I probably do fall into that camp you mentioned. Perhaps it's because there is so much to learn in drawing and painting that I just need a sense of order and a road map to progress logically. Thanks for watching.
Ive been trying to give myself at most two hours to practice certain topics for each week. Right now, its arms and the next will be the legs. If there's no extra benefit to learning a specific topic for that long, Ill deff shorten the learning time to, at most, two hours, each day. Does this also apply to other topics for the same day? Can I spend 1 hour on learning arm anatomy (via pomodoro method/break intervals), and then spend another studying color theory or mechanical designs? Maybe even add one more study topic?
I don't see why not. The only thing I would say is to maybe treat each subject as a dedicated session. That means you would spend 2×30 mins doing arms maybe in the morning, and then 2x30 mins doing colour in the evening. You might eventually find a way to combine both, like maybe painting arms for an hour, but you would be better off keeping the study subjects isolated until you are very comfortable with them, or you might find your focus gets split too much. My personal experience is that training little and often is better than trying to brute force the skill to develop. However, if your energy and enthusiasm means you could happily study for a solid 3 hours, it probably wouldn't hurt. I think a lot of learning is about being in a receptive state of mind while doing it. Hope that helps!
Very interesting approach. I started gathering all the books and courses I have and I’m going to try doing something similar. I’ve been lacking direction in my art learning journey and I really think that might help, if only just for the organization. I was actually doing something very similar when learning cello a few years back. I made a bunch of flashcards of specific exercises targeting skills I needed to practice and that really made me progress more quickly.
Ah that's amazing! I have never played any instruments so it's good to know that this system has potential to work for a variety of procedurally learned skills! Sounds like you got this! Good luck on your art journey friend! ✨️
I have big question that wasn’t addressed in the video. How do you plan the study of books that start with the basics and builds on those concepts for the later chapters? It seems that Anki just randomly selects cards (at least when first starting out)?
You can reposition cards so they will be shown next, and therefore control the sequence you learn in. If you head to the Browse section you can right click any card and reposition it to 0, so it will be shown next. I started by going through the How To Draw book in order, then started to introduce cards on things I wanted to study specifically, so there are some basic anatomy ones I get shown now, and some on landscapes and gouache painting. I am starting to circulate cards on colour theory and digital painting atm. The good thing about this is that if you decide you really suck at drawing feet, you can look through all your books to find a card that gets you drawing the masses of the foot and bring it into circulation for more targeted training. The biggest drawback is that if you add a lot of cards, you get a backlog of cards to study, so some self-discipline is required. I will try to address some of that in the next video!
@@10.000hrs thanks for the reply my friend. So I’ve been examining the method you’ve proposed here and have been coming up with an Anki gameplan of my own. I then compared it with my current study method and found out I don’t really need to change much. Your Anki method is great for those who want to commit to creating flash cards and following a regimented plan of attack. But for those who like a more freeform/traditional method of study, I propose the following: Just study books/courses as normal, and do an art piece for each page or concept you learn. Do this until you finish the book/course. For pages in a book that’s just an image, try to copy it from memory (it’s ok to check back and forth as needed). After you finish the book/course, decide if you’d like to redo it now or at a later time. If you do redo the book, do it in order from ch 1. For each page you do, decide if you mastered it or not. If not, add it to the queue 4 pages from now (exact number is up to you). Keep this up until you have mastered all of ch 1. Proceed to ch 2, rinse and repeat until done with the book/course. Alternatively, you can just pick a specific chapter to redo, if you only want to study that specific topic.
Hi and thanks for the video, it was interesting! Do you also work on longer painting/drawing projects? Do you have any plans or goals you are heading towards, like a career in the art industry or being a fine artist? I'm interested to know since that probably has a big impact on what you're practicing and learning with this method.
Hi! Thanks for your watching! Glad you enjoyed it. I do not currently have any long term projects, or aspirations to use art for a career. I would (and might) eventually try and do something like tell stories or make comic books, but I can currently only draw or paint for 1 hour a day, and so I spend that time studying. If I could express what I am trying to do as a goal though, it would be to become good enough my drawing and painting to be able to accurately create the images I have in my head, so probably more drawing from imagination like Kim Jung Gi.
7:20 is there a name for this exercise you are doing on screen? a lot of the excersizes you do seem super useful, i'd love to see (whether from you or not) videos on them so I can improve myself.
That specific exercise was from the book How to Draw by Scott Robertson and is all about making hinges and flaps in perspective. I don't have any tutorials currently but so many people ask for them that in the future I will produce some content to cover the specific drills that I feel have made the most difference in my own learning and understanding. Thanks again!
Thank you for sharing!! fascinating stuff! and very inspiring, especially for those of us who are trying to squeeze whatever kind of time they have left in the day into art hahahaa question though, - How many cards then do you do in a day? I got the impression that you do 1, or do whatever fits in 1 hour, correct me if I'm wrong.
You are correct, just 1 generally, but sometimes I might do 1 before for a quick warm-up if it's something I find easy. I also sometimes work maybe 2 cards in one hour session as a single exercise. I probably couldn't do more that though, or my focus would get split too many different ways. Thanks for watching!
Since starting to learn japanese around 2 years ago using mainly anki and immersion, I've thought about using anki to finally get myself to draw again on a consistent basis. My biggest doubt is whether cards pile up way too much (realistically, you'd probably just be able to study 1 card a day, no? What about when 5 are scheduled?), or too little (intervals quickly going up to months). In the end, it probably would've been best to just start and figure it out from there, but now that I've stumbled across this video: how did you handle these two problems? I'm sorry if you've mentioned it in the video, I'm watching this late in the day and might have missed it due to wavering attention span...
Yes! You are correct. The dreaded Anki backlog 😬 I will cover this more in the next video, but I can usually only train one card a day, meaning that progress can be slow. I tend to look ahead at the schedule and plan my week of cards to ensure I will be keeping things manageable. There are ways to spread a backlog, which I will also show, but it takes a certain degree of discipline to not take on too much at once. One saving grace, though, is that some of the earlier cards I first learned are so simple for me now that I use them as a warm-up instead of spending a full hour on them. Things like 'draw boxes in perspective'. So I can manage more than 1 card a day this way, or combine ideas. I can turn those boxes onto human torsos to practice an anatomy card or whatever. Definitely takes some trial and error to figure out.
Anki is on iOS. Or at least it was. The main dev used to maintain a premium iOS version which was where he got the money to keep working on Anki in general.
I've used Anki and SRS for language learning before, but at some point I just asked "Why not just read?" There are tools to help look up definitions of words, and if I'm reading a passage deliberately and actively trying to understand the words how is it any different than going through Anki flashcards? I'm still coming across words that are important to know, and even better I'm doing it within the context of a book that I like. Maybe the same can be said for art. I don't know anything about drawing, and I only roughly understand the SRS concept but if you're doing deliberate practice over a long period of time what's the point of Anki if not just a glorified flashcard?
Well, I suppose it pretty much is a glorified flashcard, but imagine a flashcard you write notes on that grows as your understanding develops in that isolated concept. Anki really just handles the schedule for you and stores everything in one place digitally. You could just do deliberate practice on things you choose everyday if you prefer and I am sure you would get the same results. I used to write notes in my sketch book, and that helped, but then you end up with more notes than drawings, so I started writing on the flash cards themselves.
@@10.000hrs I definitely think there's merit in taking notes and creating cards in Anki, I can see how it would help to become more organized and streamline the learning process as you have said in your video. I don't want to give the impression that I'm thinking "What's the point", these are just thoughts I've been mulling over for a while now. I don't think anyone has the best method for learning, but the most important step anyone can make is to just "Get started" no matter what your method is. Also it's interesting to see how Anki can be applied to all aspects of learning, since really I've only seen it used for pharmacology and languages, I wonder what else it can be applied to... I guess pretty much anything!
No problem, my bad for forgetting to add that. I will make a video entirely dedicated to the books soon. The main ones I use are: - How to Draw and How to Render by Scott Robertson - Landscape Painting and The Landscape Painters Workbook by Mitchell Albala - Colour and Light by James Gurney - another book also called Colour and Light by 3D Total - Drawing Form and Pose by Tom Fox - the Propic anatomy books - Anatomy for Sculptors by Zarins - Rediscovering Gouache by Aljoscha Blau - Beginners Guide to Digital Painting by 3D Total
I think the hardest (for me at least) and most important part in all of this is the skill of inventing challenges for each concept. It isn't obvious that the book will have exercises to apply the skill, and it is very much possible to make up a challenge that is a complete waste of time due to lack of understanding of the concept or 'missing the forest for the tree'. How do you go about it?
Excellent question! The honest answer is trial and error. Some pages genuinely have no lesson, and just make for nice reading so they get no challenge. Others literally have the exercise/challenge there on the page. Sometimes, the challenge is not laid out obviously but can sort of be figured out as more of an abstract idea. Like drawing and trying to capture the thing you like most about an object or scene. It's important to remember that you can always update the challenges, because what I find happens is that as you study a card more and more, your understanding of what the book talks about can change. This means that sometimes I update or replace the challenges. Nothing is set in stone so if you cannot think of a challenge,, don't worry. You might think of one later on after you are a bit more knowledgeable. A card with no challenge might suddenly be seen as an opportunity to work on a particular thing!
@@10.000hrs Oh that's an excellent point. Thank you :) Also: the thought is still not fully organized in my head however, I wonder about the usefulness of going over basic skills when you already gained some level of competency in a more sophisticated skill which apply the basic skill. For example: Line making to box creating, to boxes in perspective to complected constructions. I don't think there's much point in making a page full of lines if I'm already making boxes...? Does that makes sense? (unless you change the idea of line making to something like 'expressive' line making in different tools and methods). How do you take that into count while using Anki? Or does the scheduling fixes that, and once you have a card you've mastered you treat it as more of a quick warmup for old time sake (instead of suspending it)?
@mrmouse4121 I do exactly what you have described! After a while of practising a skill, there really isn't any need to do anything more than review it every so often, and the most important fundamental skills that were originally trained in isolation become reflexes that you use all the time anyway on whatever you work on. Perspective is a good example of this. Everything you draw uses it, so there is no need to review it every week once it's understood. The schedule takes care of this because you can just treat them as very easy, and eventually they only flash up every few years! I do these easy tasks as warm ups for maybe 10 minutes on days when they appear. If you find that actually you struggle a bit, then you can treat the card as hard again and work on it more often. At the moment I spend a lot of time drawing heads and all the little things I have been working singularly like shaping the rear of the skull and the area where the neck and skull meet, I can now pretty much just automatically pull off when working on the next thing. It's like spinning plates or juggling balls. At first, you can only manage one thing to focus on, but over time that thing becomes so easy that you do it automatically while working on the next ball and the next and so on. Hope that makes sense! Once you get into this, I think everyone finds their own rhythm and becomes able to regulate their own training schedule at a pace which works for them. It definitely takes some trial and error!
Hello! The books that first introduced me to a lot of the concepts were by an author called Barbara Oakley. She has a few books that are all good for getting to grips with a lot of the general concepts. A more practical book would be something like 'The 4 Hour Chef' by Tim Ferriss, which is actually a cookbook, but the first chapter is all about meta learning. I think he may have made that chapter available for free 👍 Thanks for watching! I'm glad you have an interest in this subject 😊
No they are not available sadly. Mostly this is because they are made from books so that would be piracy if I share them. But also the cards are used as a digital journal, and I update them when I study so it's best for you to make your own, personal to you, that make sense to you and your current experiments and skill level. Like having your own note book. I would recommend trying it on a chapter of a book you like, as it's not for everyone and you don't want to invest too much time if you end up hating it. Someone suggested making a deck from the content on Draw-A-Box so that might be a good place to start.
hello! first of all thank you so much for this video, this week i’ve been researching a lot on learning how to learn, because i love learning art but there’s not much information on the topic besides "just draw", i even tried to use a tool for note-taking called obsidian to take my art notes because i realized that a lot of concepts and activities presented in all the courses i’ve been taking connect in a way, so i wanted to see all these connections in my studies but seems like that won’t work because obsidian isn’t good at handling images so i wanted to ask if you are comfortable of course, if you take notes, if you do do you have any method or do you just write something quickly and then get to draw, if you do take notes, do you use any tool such as google docs or something else. sorry for all these questions but this is the first channel i’ve found that approaches learning art a bit similar to how i do it, so i would be truly grateful for any insight, thanks : D
No problem, I am glad to help! Let's say this is a brand new concept on a card I have just brought into circulation. I would practice for 30 mins, take a break, see what needs correcting, then go again for 30 mins. I then make notes just on what went well or what I failed at. Or even anything I noticed about myself while doing the card. I might stop and make notes as I go, but generally, I record my thoughts at the end. For example, recently I have been drawing heads in cubes and found that sometimes I would start drawing the head inside my ghost cube and end up deviating from the cube, so I still have a head, but it's not in the perspective I set up originally. Why am I doing that? Would I be better off trying to sort of sculpt the cube into a head? Or draw a head first, then a box around it? I try and consider different ways of doing the same thing based on the mistakes I am making, and because you can think so fast, I use the cards because they are to hand to record these thoughts and then when I see the card again, I have a save point to continue thinking from, a bit like saving progress in a video game. I have not used anything like Google docs but if you preferred that, I see no difference in terms of how it helps you. If you prefer, you could just make notes in your sketchbook, which is what I used to do, but then you make your sketches messy. It's been a lot of trial and error but I would posit that the active engagement in the subject for that session and the note taking is helping to drive the progress forward, so however you do it, I think it's worth it. If there's anything I can help you with, let me know!
Well idk this does seem like a good thing to study and i have had this question for a long time too. But without a control group idk how effective this study is cause there is no baseline to measure towards. I think comparing muscle recovery to spaced repetition is not a good comparison cause the reson you have rest times is for your muscles to recover is you are tearing the muscles apart. idk how well that translates between different cell groups. Cause by the same logic you should be able to build muscle by following plyomerics training schedule. So working out 2 times a week but we know that doesn't work. cause they are just different parts of our body that have different cells that have different requrements when healing. also when you are studying you are not distryoing neurons you are growing new ones and making the pathway stronger. So that part is kind of iffy. I know that you might be trying to only explain things but idk if i feel as tho it does it justic. Next thing is you said that pros studying 16 hrs isnt effective but you are going off the assumption that pros don't practice spaced repetition. The thing is a lot of pro artist recommend you to list out the things you are bad at and practice those. While they might not have a structured routine like yours they are doing spaced repetition just not as structured. by learning things they are bad at and recalling their previous information when they are applying it to a new drawing. A lot of then recommend you to make a list out of your week points. And focus on those. Also when i am studying i just don't study one thing. I cycle between perspective, anatomy, colour and other things. So idk if the refractory period applies when you are learning different things cause our brain just doesn't shut down after learning a new information for specific amout of time. And final point is that application of knowledge is also Very important. There are studies showing that too, i think. There is a reason why the most common advice for learning a language is to move the said locations and have conversations. I think that's the case cause there is space repetition + volume+ application. So all i am saying is cross modal approach is better then just 1 single approach and people who do art all the time probably do that. Cause they are obsessed with getting better. But hey that's just a theory.
Those are some fantastic points! It's very tricky with no control group, and I would love to see one, so hopefully if people begin trying this stuff we can all improve the data and see whether this is more effective, as effective, or less effective that someone who spends hours 16 studying at a time. The muscle analogy I gave is not an accurate comparison, you are correct, but while you are not destroying neurons, they get reinforced by a protein called myelin. The rate this protein can be added is limited, and only gets added when you are not using that neuron, usually when sleeping or doing something totally unrelated to art. That's why one person who trains for 100 hours straight might not actually improve as well as someone who only did 20 hours, over 20 days, but the science behind this and what actually causes the rate of improvement still needs developing. It might be that different diets affect myelin production or something. The amount and quality of sleep seems to play a part though, as does exercise. Like you say, we need a control group!
I typically practice for 1 hour in the evening a day because that's all I can manage most weekdays. What I practice depends on whatever card is scheduled for that day. I like to work in 30-minute chunks before taking a 5 min break, very similar to something called the Pomodoro Technique. I can fill a sketchbook page with many smaller studies in 30 mins, or if doing a bigger study or painting, I will just stop and take a break before coming back to it. I think a lot of it is down to experimentation and finding what works for you. You might find you can learn better if studying after waking up, so play around with it! Hope that helps! Thanks for your question.
@@10.000hrsthank you so much! I’m in my 4th year in college and I’m soooo desperate to improve on drawing but I don’t know how I wanna go about it and I’ve never really seen anyone learn art like this but i wanna try it now 😂 I’ll probably do what you’re doing right now and draw for 1-2 hours when i can! Do you have any other social media where I can follow you?
No I don't post to social media, actually but might set something up soon. Good luck with your studies my friend! Give it a try, see what works for you, experiment, and find your way.
I was going to suggest using a bigger, flat brush for your gouache dog study, but right after I typed that, you tried the exact same thing. Using that small brush makes it too easy for you to overwork your painting and be fussy with it.
I think you can honestly learn anything with it, but not all fields would use it in the same way. I have heard so many stories of medical students who swear by this method, and those who study languages. I wish this was taught in schools and from younger ages because I think it would be a revolution in learning. When I think back to the school I went to and how they taught us I am surprised I remember anything 😆
I would say that buying a used book is virtually the same as piracy as the original author does not get the money. there's nothing wrong with using a service like internet archive. This is the same argument when buying a used game at gamestop. If your not buying new the original creator does not make money but someone else does, Therefore the party selling is profiting off of someone's work.
Very interesting approach. Would you share the names of the books used please?
Yes, of course! The main ones are:
- How to Draw and How to Render by Scott Robertson
- Landscape Painting and The Landscape Painters Workbook by Mitchell Albala
- Colour and Light by James Gurney
- a totally different book also called Colour and Light by 3D Total
- Drawing Form and Pose by Tom Fox
- some anatomy books by an artist called Propic Taco which are in Korean and English
- Anatomy for Sculptors by Zarins
- Rediscovering Gouache by Aljoscha Blau
- Beginners Guide to Digital Painting by 3D Total
Finally someone who goes about applying nueroscience to art! I've been trying for a long time to apply some of the principles of meta learning to making art but finding examples of how to do so has been like searching through a wasteland.
Yep there's very little out there apart from people just saying what spaced repetition is as if reading from a textbook. That's why I started this channel though, so hopefully we can increase awareness of neuroscience and then see where it helps! Thanks for your support!
I've been learning art fundamentals with Spaced Repetition systems for years now (as a professional artist) and with Anki since about 1-2 years. Especially for anatomy / character art it's extremely helpful. So I definitely agree with your theory here.
Ooh, that's very interesting to me. Do you mind me asking how similar the way you use Anki is to mine? I haven't met anyone else who does this and would love to get your input on how you do it!
@@10.000hrs Mainly I use it for anatomy studies / repetition (like only words on the front of the card "triceps back view" and the image with details on the back of the card) and studies of artworks (from my favorite artists and new ones I find on occasion).
For the "procedural parts" I have not included book / course pages like you (at least not yet, now I am considering it :D), but I concepted similar challenges covering studies for the art fundamentals as well as imaginative drawing from memory and drawing using the testing effect (just quickly looking at a picture on the front side of a card, then trying to drawing / constructing it from memory, then checking in with the card again etc.)
@SandraSuesser Thank you for responding. That sounds like a great way to practice. And I am glad that you feel it has helped you develop. Interestingly, Kim Jung Gi learnt to draw a lot of things like you describe, by looking at a subject, drawing with no reference, then looking at what was missing and trying again. There definitely seems to be something to all of this, but it is not taught at art school to my knowledge.
@@10.000hrs Definitely this is lacking! Though since I've become an art teacher, I've also been teaching that both off- and online :D
OK, I have a lot to say about this now that I am a professional artist with and a self taught artist.
First of all, This shit is amazing! Great video, great insights, Amazing progress! I'll need more time than I have to study this vídeo to see how I can apply some of this in my life. Amazing stuff.
That said, there are a couple of things I need to point out.
~Aesthetic is not a Fundamental~
Working with something is not Learning something. Although we need to learn art (be it fundamentals or the abstractions) to work as an artist, most of the skills we learn through art training is considered "Implicit" skills. No one will ask for them, you have to have them. But the Work is not having the skills or using the skills by themselves; The work is something else, we just need to use "Art" to do the work.
A easy way to express this is "Every job in Art has an Aesthetic or a Aesthetic expectation to it and we need to do This specific Aesthetic to This specific Job"
I'm not talking about Style, be it cartoon or Realism (not right now at least, because they are a style in other contexts), I'm talking about the deliverables you are expected to deliver in a project;
If you spend countless hours learning art fundamentals and art techniques and whatever other concepts you want, You will learn the concept but not how to apply or use it in the context of the work. Regardless if you know the pipeline of work you want to do.
- I'm not saying it's a waste of time to focus on one aspect of art for any reason, everybody needs to do that from time to time, and some people are just passionate about certain things in art. That is normal and OK -
Where am I getting at:
It is a really good Idea to focus your output to a single aesthetic that you want to learn or work with;
How you do that?
Let's use (Overwatch's [Project]) (Concept Art [Deliverable]) as an example
Perspective day 1 -> Study the concept as is
Perspective day 2 -> Perspective in Overwatch concept art
Perspective day 3 -> Study the Concept as is and try to convert it to Overwatch's Concept art
Repeat
You will quickly notice that the thing you are drawing has many applications outside of the Aesthetic (Project + Deliverable) you are trying to learn, And you will notice that The Aesthetic you are trying to learn has it's internal rules.
This will give you not only the mileage and the cumulative experience with the Art fundamentals you will be training how to percieve and apply it to the Aesthetic you NEED to know in order to get a job.
~My Experience with Interlieving~
Interlieving only happened to me after 10 years of art practice.
I have no back up information for this, besides my experience, but Interlieving in Art needs more time to happen. Probably becuase It's practice needs to result in abstract information that can be manipulated instead of concrete information that can be used;
That puts art in a very odd place. Because while you can try to learn a couple of subjects at the same time to force interleaving, you will only be able to do that after you aquire enough knowledge in one area in order to make associations with another area. And some fundamentals have no correlation until you get to the advanced stuff
But if you do blocked practice for too long (What I did) you will get absolutelly nowhere; It's actually stupid.
How I solved this issue was doing something the majority of professionals and more experienced artists tell us to do and we dont:
You need a Project.
When you have a project, let's say: Draw a Furry OC.
You can look at the impossible large list of things you need to learn and reduce it to the few things you think you need to learn to do the project.
Give yourself a timeframe (1 week to 6 months) Study everything you think you'll need for that project and DO the project.
Doing it like this Forces your brain to reavaluate what was really necessary and this causes the Interleaving to happen.
"Oh, I needed to draw the shadow shapes before I stated shading...but to do that I needed to do the blocking correctly, that why Value needs a Shape to exist and why Edge is done lastly" Things like that don't happens often enough If you don't have a Project (or an Aesthetic) to self avaluate.
~Having a project is about studying a Aesthetic~
The last thing I want to say is:
If you want to work with art, train the things you'll need to execute the job in the same visual context of the job.
You need to learn Academic realism to do cartoon? It will help a lot, sure, but the Realism exercises you are doing are just exercises, what counts it's the stylized drawings with the applyed knowledge from the realism studies.
You want to do concept art? properly rendering multiple materials and such is a requirement, but the job is about shape language.
>>Focus your training into aquiring and applying the skills to the work you want to do>Make projects and milestones in the same Aesthetic goals you what to achieve
Woah, those are some amazing insights! That's exactly the sort of stuff I was hoping people would comment because I simply do not have the mileage to appreciate things like this, so thank you so much 😊
I just draw for fun really so in that sense maybe I'm not really seeing this stuff from the POV of someone who wants to get employed doing concept art (for example) which means I have a blind spot!
The parts you mentioned about having a project make a lot of sense. I have some experiments lined up for future videos that I might have to treat as you have described to see what I learn from that. In meta learning that would potentially be described as a 'stake', effectively a deadline, that is something I have not covered yet in my videos.
I find that as I learn more, the knowledge does overlap and your understanding of something you THOUGHT you knew well changes, which I think you were describing as well.
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment, I will take on board everything you said.
@@10.000hrsThe Project is something more complex than just having a deadline. There are some core skills that are not fundamentals that we need to learn like "how / when to finish a project" "how to avaluate a good idea to paint" "how to choose between ideas to finish" "What is the focal point to this particular project and how should I emphasize this and not waste time on stuff that's not important but needs to be in the project"
This abstract (advanced) components can only be studied while you are doing the Real thing this forces you to apply everything and see all the fundamentals together. This is the fucked up part. The fundamentals can be trained in isolation but for you to understand why they are fundamental you need to apply them together to a tangible project to trully understand them and get used to dealing with multiple abstract concepts at the same time in your head.
Example:
I am a comic book colorist;
If I try to color a page, panel by panel. First value, than hue, than saturation, First my focal point than the background. I will never be able to see The Whole page.
My planning is The whole page first. All of the hue, value saturation, composition, lighting, storytelling, everything at the same time.
Than I go back and Refine each panel, each value, each hue to mach the vision I set out to do in the planning.
I think this is why books work much better to self taught artists becuase they explain the concepts as they are applied ratter than just exemplifying them. Something courses or youtube videos lack when they are presenting the idea for the sake of time.
@ThiagoCRocha-fh6lg ah okay I got it, sorry for misunderstanding. So would you say that in short it's learning how to use the individual components together as a cohesive unit? And the best way you have found to do that is with a proper project like maybe making your own character design?
@@10.000hrs exacly
As a fellow artist, (not a professional) one thing I have found is that interleaving may happen sooner when you constantly try to do everything at the same time (e.g. color, value, composition). This is very much my own experience, because ever since I started learning art, I have the tendency to abandon structures and methodical approaches. And I don't recommend it, it puts a high strain on your mind and energy to focus. High risk, high reward, basically
THATS SO SMARTTTT going to do this with artists i admire so i can study all their good qualities and apply it on my own
Sounds great! Let me know how it goes. I have been wanting to make a 'master study' deck where I regularly paint from works I admire but haven't done it yet.
This could be a game changer. I’m just now overwhelmed with the prospect of making the flash cards - which books, how to create exercises from these etc. it would be interesting to see more info on the actual content of the cards and a more thorough break down on exactly how to approach your own learning material and develop cards - it just feels a bit like the overwhelming task of working through all the training material is now replaced by overwhelm on how to make the flash cards! This channel is no.1 though in offering a real life method for people who have other commitments 👍🏻
Thanks for your feedback! I can appreciate that this all seems highly intimidating for those new to this sort of learning.
I am working on a deck that I want to make available for people so they can try those out for themselves which I hope to release before the end of this year, alo gsode a discord server to help manage it all.
It will all be made available for free, and I'm trying to get it to logically lead you along a progressive route to building specific generic skills, which I consider to be the most important things I have worked on.
Thanks for the interest and for following along 💕
@@10.000hrs That would be amazing! Thanks again for all your efforts in sharing this and doing the hard yards in organising the method.
interesting watch, I've actually started using anki for concepts/word meanings I find in drawing resources and the idea of using cards to challenge yourself is one I'll keep in mind for future reference.
I found the challenges made a huge difference. I actually try and do it now for cards on other subjects as well besides painting and drawing.
regarding efficiency, my reaction is that while you may make more progress per time invested by studying 1 hour per day, let's say in the 1st hour you make 100 progress points, in the 2nd you make 60, and in the 3rd you make 40, in that day you've made double the progress. It may be less efficient, but more effective.
Of course this depends on the real rates of diminishing returns and how much recovery time is needed in order to know the sweet spot, but I'd hesitate to encourage people to draw less than they might want, especially since certain paintings require significant time investment and would take months or years to complete at such a rate.
Good video, so much to think about! Cheers
Thank you! Yes, the sweet spot you talk about is around 30 mins for me, and then I take a break. The 1 hour limitation is actually more because I have a full-time job and so can only commit to an hour a day!
I have to make that hour count, so this method ensures I focus on the most worthwhile stuff in a way that should make it stick.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. There is indeed a lot to think about!
There are also things you learn about how to regulate yourself and pain points in how you are working that really only come through sustained efforts. If someone thinks carefully about their experience with longer work sessions, it should both show them distinct problems (eg. sore wrists from gripping too tightly) and provide the incentive to actually fix those problems.
Its super creepy, I was just thinking of doing this 2 days ago and suddenly this video pops up with a way better way of doing it then I was planning.
Great video
I never thought about this...using anki this way 😮 that's amazing!
Thanks, glad you found it useful. I had so much success with Anki for other things. It took a while to find a way to make it work for art, but I feel it has helped me.
this is such a game changer! i've been struggling with structuring my studies and the anki method feels like it would work well for how i learn
Glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, give it a go, play around, and see what works for you!
I’m using anki for language learning, but I never thought that you can use it for learning drawing. Thanks! I think it will help me a lot with keeping drawing routine
You are very welcome! It's a little different, but if you are already familiar with Anki, I am sure you will figure it out quickly. Thanks for watching!
I'm rewatching this with more attention this time, and I must say the thought you shared about spaced repetition someday becoming the norm is exciting and beautiful. The "gains" for everyone would be insane and it's exciting to imagine what new ways to learn could be developed in the future. Anki helped me a LOT internalizing Japanese, so I'm very willing to try this method out, especially since I've read multiple good art books but would like a better way to manage the knowledge they offer (the handiest tactic I've developed is Highlighting/ bookmarking sections I consider important in books in PDF format, I had no idea you could do that in any modern PDF reader.)
I think it needs more research, which is beyond what I can do, but if I can at least make others aware of it, then maybe more research will be done.
I really think that learning how to learn is like being given the instruction manual for the brain, and makes achieving life goals far easier. It should probably be how we are taught from a young age.
I will share with you that I experiment with a lot more than art. I started a couple of years ago chopping several key 'must read' books, and self help books into small batches and use Anki to frequently reread and make notes after the captured excerpt.
It's amazing how rereading books like this over time changes your understanding of the subject. You end up reworking and refining the notes you initially made, and each card becomes a deep dive into something.
It's like note-taking on steroids, and all scheduled for you, so you don't have to remember to reread periodically. The only downside is that it's slow.
You take a long time, slowly working through a book, but ruminating on it probably far greater than 99% of those that ever read it before.
For self-help books, it's almost like a form of therapy, and once again, I feel this could hugely benefit certain people with things like confidence issues. I even wrote a challenge on each card like I do with the art cards to ensure the subject is being practised, and the feedback from that goes into the notes too.
I’ve been thinking about this for guitar and drawing. I use Anki for studying work stuff. I will play around with your ideas and see what works for me. Thanks for the video.
Nice! It's definitely different, and you have to be careful not to overload yourself bringing new cards in, but I think it works. It forces you to really scrutinise what you are doing more so than using it to study something like a language, for example. I'd love to know how you get on with it!
I really admire your hyper logical way of approaching art studies. Your drawings turn out very nice and the realism and subjects you choose really highlights your inner artistry even if they're done in the name of academia!
Thank you very much. I still consider it all an experiment, but hope to one day produce work as good as the artists and illustrators I admire.
You've put into words something Ive been trying to work towards for ages. Amazing stuff.
Awesome! It's nice to see there are other people who think similarly about art and learning. Thanks for watching.
What a gem of a video! I'm so excited to apply this to my own art journey.
❤Thank you for sharing the amazing insights.
My pleasure. Thanks so much for watching and taking the time to leave a comment 💓 I hope it helps you improve!
This video essentially brought into light what I’ve been learning recently about art but could never put into words. You’ve earned a sub for me because I’ve finally found a resource where it has a clear objective on how to find the direction for an artists journey (imo). A solid stepping stone and I’ll definitely keep an eye on your content. Thank you so much for your video.
Ah, thanks, friend, that's kind of you to say. It's not for everyone, but I like to approach learning things in this way. I am glad it helped.
Wow, I like your sientific aproach, never saw anyone who would study art like that! Now I wanna try that too. And I'm difinetly waiting for updates on your journey!
Thank you, thats very kind of you to say.
Just play around, see how your brain best learns things, and experiment! I found this method useful, because I can progress at a steady pace and really get involved with my learning very deeply.
Some people prefer to tear through new content as fast as possible!
Neither is right or wrong, just gotta learn about yourself 👍
Thanks for your kindness and support 💖
This video was actually very helpful
I'm so glad it helped you! Thanks for stopping by! Good luck with your art 🎨 ✨️
I've probably been using anki for over 5 years for academia, but i never even considered using it for something like art. Incredible! Thank you for sharing this.
No problem! It's pretty much the same idea but I think it's a slightly different type of knowledge acquisition and retention because it's essentially skill based.
It's not as simple as learning a word and reviewing it. It's more like reviewing and practicing a skill for a good hour or so, making notes on the card, and picking up again next time.
You are 100% right about studying for 8 hours a day is not going to help you. I use to manage 3-6 on average (No seriously) a day around a year ago for a 6 month time frame. I got super into it and just wanted to get better and basically dedicated everything I had only to realize most of it was a massive waste of time.
-Drawing all day with intent just puts stress on your brain and your cognition will tank by hour 3
-Its not realistically sustainable and you will destroy your life
-You WILL burn out and burn out hard wasting weeks
-Its way better to do a few pages a day step away and then evaluate your work the next day then it is to make the same mistakes with 100 pages.
- When you're starting and finding it hard to commit Its way easier mentally to set aside an hour or 2 with no phone or tv then it is an entire day.
I get way more mileage out of doing morning reading, draw what I just studied then put it away. 1-3 hours a day studying 1-3 hours drawing what I want so 1 hour study 2 free drawing or project or 3 study 1 hour of free drawing.
That's a really fascinating insight. Thanks so much for sharing it here! I love hearing from others who have experimented like this and learned what works for them!
I have spoken to professional athletes and musicians about this in the past, and even they say that when it comes to actual skill development, little and often is the key.
Seems that human tendency is to just want to overload and go nuts, but the actual brain just cannot sustain it.
People don't like the comparison because the brain is not a muscle, but the biological processes that wire up the neural pathways only occur when you are NOT doing the activity, usually while sleeping, so it's the same problem as someone who works out for 8 hours a day trying to get buff faster. Not gonna happen.
This is the to go method to learn anything. Wow 🙌🙌🙌. Pls like this video. New artists need to know this.
Recently Ive been questioning if there is a stable livelihood down the road, but for now Im just going to keep learning and working on my art day by day.
Yep, a little every day eventually builds up to make a mountain ⛰️
What a wonderful video!! I'll have to give this a go - it might end up being something I recommend to my students.
Thanks! It's helped me, so I would be interested to see how others find it. Just don't go crazy with adding lots of new cards to study at once, or it quickly backs up and you end up with like 10 cards to study on one day.
I will show how to avoid that in the next video.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank You THANK YOU!!! I've been looking for this video for YYYEEARRRSSS. Ever since I took psychology I've always wanted to find the ways I could best use my brain to get better at art, and like you said there's not a lot of info out there so thank you :)
I'm very happy you found it useful! The next video will go into a few more things related to this, like how to avoid getting a backlog, and how I scan books, stuff like that.
I literally was just thinking about this a few days ago and then this pop up in my front page, thank you so much for this video!
Wow that's cool! Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for watching.
What a great concept. I feel like I'm getting in at the ground floor of something special. I'm glad I clicked on the random "my art journey" video that ultimately told the algorithm to point me towards one of your videos as part of, I guess, my "learning to draw" content phase
Ah thanks! That's so nice of you to say! It's all a bit of an experiment but the techniques I use seem to be something that people find interesting. They aren't for everyone but I really feel they made a difference and helped me accelerate my development.
Nice to have you following along, and I wish you well in your learning my friend 💕
This is incredible , i do something similar but I’ve always found it difficult to keep track of my repetitive training, so my skills fall off. I think i need to make something of a schedule to keep track of so i don’t forget.
Anki is great for that! It helps you regularly review things so you don't have to worry about remembering when to study, you just do whatever it tells you to work on that day.
Play around with it and see what works for you! ❤️✨️
Thank you for sharing these!! It’s inspiring for me :)
Very glad you find them inspiring 💖
Thank you for this video! It's a very interesting topic to me, *how* to study. I think the biggest takeaway for me is the most important thing is finding a method of learning and practice that works for you. I definitely want to take some of these concepts and try them out myself. Thank you for sharing! 😊
Ah, that's cool. I am super pleased you found it useful. Yes, I think you have absorbed the most important lesson of all, which is find what works for you, and try stuff out for yourself to see what parts are useful. Good luck with your studies!
very nice and informative video so far!
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
thank you for sharing the knowledge! I hope I go to your level soon, and that sweet sweet art quality I aim for. This video is like a reminder not to be lazy or skip a drawing a day.
Yes, constant daily progression seems to be an important thing to aspire to. Even better if you can fully immerse yourself in the learning and work on something specific that session. I am glad you enjoyed it and thankful for your support 💖
Wonderful and interesting experiment. I think it's a topic well worth exploring.Thanks so much for sharing your approach in such logical and detailed manner! Stumbling upon content like this that shows just how superbly different, and at the same time similar we all are, it just makes me grateful to be alive at this particular point in time.
Haha, thank you very much. I like the philosophical line of your thinking. It is amazing to be able to share things with random people, and for us all to appreciate different approaches to learning.
What an intriguing topic to be used in drawing.
I have a hard time implementing study methods, as sometimes my study sessions end up just organizing myself really, with no real study. Indeed, it happens not only for drawing, but for my masters studies. Recently I have been more successful and I wish to implement things like Anki slowly in the process. This was eye opening in that sense, as I can see my efforts for learning valid in many fields, be my masters at economic or at drawing.
Thank for your effort on composing this video, it is really dense but well put. I look forward to watching more content.
If i could ask for something, is a reference list for this video as I got interested in the many books you went through.
Thanks so much! Spaced repetition would indeed help you learn economics or anything else academic. A lot of med students use it too. There is an r/anki subreddit which might have more info for economics specifically.
The next video will be about some of the pitfalls of this, like how if you circulate too many new cards you can develop a backlog, and I will make a video all about the books and why I chose them as that is the most asked for thing.
In the meantime the main books I use are:
- How to Draw and How to Render by Scott Robertson
- Colour and Light by James Gurney
- another book also called Colour and Light by 3D Total
- Landscape Painting and The Landscape Painters Workbook by Mitchell Albala
- Drawing Form and Pose by Tom Fox
- Anatomy for Sculptors by Zarins
- the anatomy books by a Korean artist called Propic
- Beginners Guide to Digital Painting by 3D Total
@@10.000hrsThank you for summing it up!
One thing I enjoy is making the cards, which you said you did. It seens very pedagogical to look for material and understand what can become a card, I've tried importing cards in the past, but I droped it pretty fast.
Nonetheless thank you for making this content, it was inspiring.
A pure pleasure, very interesting point of view . Lot to get inspired by and very helpful to create a path to improvement and enjoyment . Thanks 🙏
My pleasure, thank you for watching. I hope I can continue to make more videos that people find value in ❤️
Thanks for such a detailed video... I've been creating a new artwork every single day for the last 4 years...gonna try to incorporate a couple of the points you mentioned in this video...
THANK YOU!
No problem, thank you for watching. Sounds like you already have a solid plan 👌 glad you found the video useful
This is BRILLIANT! Seriously, you could make this into an academic research paper - I know I'd read it. I'm familiar with Anki & spaced repetition but never thought about how to combine that with my artistic practice.
A tip for your gouache studies: try using as few brushstrokes as possible to create the shapes. If you look at the orange dog study in the card, that artist uses quite distinct squarish/rectangular blobs to shade. This A) makes it more visually engaging and B) prevents the gouache from getting muddy. As you said, gouache is super easy to reactivate, so you really want to limit pushing it around. Also, the biggest revolution in my gouache paintings was when I worked from very thin to very thick layers, and gave each layer time to dry completely before moving on. Let me see if I can find the video I watched on this & link it here; it totally blew my mind. Gouache is a difficult medium to work with at any level, but especially as a beginner - I seriously commend you for your effort.
Thank you very much for this video. I've been in a rut both creatively and educationally (I've been teaching myself art since middle school, and I'm halfway through my English undergrad). This has inspired me to go at it from a fresh perspective! It was the kick I needed to get back into my groove for sure.
Edit: Found the video I was thinking of! "How To Layer Gouache - Dos and Don'ts" by Ogygia Art ua-cam.com/video/z2rLCfAyXCg/v-deo.htmlsi=NLq_rVIICB6TE62w
Wow, that's a great video. Thanks so much for sharing your experience with me!
I definitely have been keeping the level of opacity the same, even as I progress with darker layers, so will give the opacity control a try next time.
I'm glad you found my video useful, I have a huge deal of admiration for people like yourself who have been consistently self-teaching to improve over such a long time. You are very dedicated. Especially while also working an under grad! Good luck with your studies!
This is absolute GOLD!
The actual drawing examples are cool to watch... but would be nice to go into the mechanics of setting up a sample deck /card in Anki.
I tried once but found it a pita to set up my own decks, confusing & with zero help.
Whereas using published decks (for language in my case) was easy.
Don't forget the constant drip feed of caffeine & carbs, the brain fuel for any journey of inspiration...!
The reason spaced repetition works is SLEEP. Your brain consolidates each day's stimuli. So good sleep is vital.
Thank you. Excellent points.I will try to cover some of that in my next video to help make things a bit clearer.
Haha, yeah, it is amazing how much sleep is needed. And the food. This is all effectively a biological process and to reinforce neural pathways needs all that good stuff as you say.
never considered to use Anki for learning to draw, but immediately understood some benefits it could bring. I will start to use it. What is not clear for me is how are you making the repetitions rates given by Anki work since you are using just one to two cards per day
I am just winging it with the repetition rates as Anki is designed for declarative learning. I find that early on you need to probably train a card every day, and some you get good at quickly, while others take a long time.
I tend to always pick the second button, treating the knowledge as being difficult, because that seems to make a card appear every few days for the initial learning period.
Because I spend an hour on a card, and can only study for an hour a day, my progress is slow and I cannot always circulate new cards, but that's all I can manage right now.
If I look ahead and see I have more than 1 card due the next day, then I will be beginning to develop the dreaded Anki back log.
The saving grace is that some cards I have studied for a while now I am can do very easily, so I might spend 5 minutes on them as a warm up, and set them to easy (button 4) to shoot them off into the distance.
I have to very carefully consider how well I think I am doing in the concept a card deals with, and work around that.
The algorithm that Anki uses might be totally wrong for this, but if I can build awareness of it, maybe someone more qualified than me can design one that works better, but honestly I think that the science behind the algorithms themselves would have to advance first.
thank you I have a deep understanding of drawing and stuff. But i am humble and work to find my limits. I want to continue my growth. Just drawing will not get me there. This is the discipline that i needed. I will try this for leveling up my oil painting and getting a deeper understanding of figure drawing. Then any other area of growth I need.
Sounds like you have a good ability to reflect on yourself and improve, which is really the most important thing. I have no doubt you will achieve your goals ✨️
THIS IS AMAZING!!! thank for sharing this information.
You are very welcome!
I'm very happy I found ur channel. This video for some reason has motivated more than anything else to try getting back into art.
Can I ask, for Anki are u customizing the easy to hard buttons in some way or just using the default settings? Sorry if u already stated this explicitly somewhere but I just started with Anki and am wondering if the default setting makes sense for more of the lower level skills
Haha welcome! I am glad you found the video useful.
I am not customising the buttons, I just use the defaults that Anki uses. Anki is designed for a different sort of learning, so honestly the buttons can be taken with a pinch of salt.
The reason I always hit the 'hard' button, number 2, is that it makes the card show up very often in the beginning. Some cards I have practiced a lot over the last few years I now hit the easier buttons for, so they show up less often.
You just have to play around with it, and you can always reschedule a card.
My next video will cover some of these points and show how to do them. Most importantly if you you are just starting out though is to not go TOO crazy with bringing in new cards, or you develop a backlog.
I only bring in new cards when I have a sufficient gap in the schedule, but as I say I will cover this next time!
It's just a useful way to track your learning and give yourself a routine. It's very flexible and I think honestly everyone should adapt what I show to make it work better for themselves.
Thank you for amazing explanation, this open my mind for different way of learning and different perspective of it. I will be expecting more from your channel❤
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed it. I will show more experiments in the future, so hopefully I can continue to produce content that you enjoy and fund helpful ❤️
Thank you so much! It is always so intresting to see different people's approaches and thoughts, I'm so happy that I've discovered your channel today. As a student I do work witn Anki a lot so definetely will try to use it also for art. Wish you all the best!
Thanks so much, what a nice thing to say. Same to you! 💗
Hello and thank you for your cool idea! I've been getting into art for 5 months now and I have been looking for something to make my practicing more consistent! So I will definitely try this! :)
No problem, I'm so glad you found it inspiring. Yeah give it a go and see what you like and don't like. The only thing to watch out for is the rate you add new cards as you can end up with a backlog of cards in the schedule, but I'll cover more about how to deal with that in the next video.
I’m definitely going to be doing this. Wow! What a video 🤙🏼🖤
Thanks friend! It's all about experimenting and finding what works for you!
I actually tried a method similar to this although I had no idea at the time that it was called spaced repetition and I didn't use Anki, just a notebook with a schedule, and I burned out hard. Of course it may be because I did stuff wrong and unintentionally overworked myself, but I tried to keep my study sessions to 2 hours/day max and after roughly 3 months of doing this every day I just began hating the process itself even though I saw improvements. Now I mostly do art for the enjoyment of it and only do studies pertaining to the piece that I'm working on. I'm definitely not improving as fast but I'm having fun and don't hate the process.
That's good advice! If you go nuts using this method you will absolutely burn out. My 1 hour a day works for me, but is mostly enforced by my life, job, etc. Gotta find what works for you!
There are so many different ways to learn and they seem to work differently for different people. I am glad you have found what works for you!
Do you do thumbnails to test out shapes & colors first? Very useful and less time investment but good at training yr eye and less about good and bad results. Also using tracing paper can be helpful. Gouache can be unforgiving. Watercolor is easier imo.
Great video thankyou! I'm going to check out this Anki method for my own art journey!
Thanks friend! It's worth a go! The next video will cover some more of the best practices and things to watch out for like ending up with a backlog of cards.
A good way to practice color and value is to have a lighting/atmospheric color that imparts itself onto the local color of your subject, and then a floor or other object that can impart a reflective color onto the subject where light is bounching between them/rim lighting.
This will quickly improve understanding of color theory as youll be practicing value alongside color mixing and seeing how the different palettes work off eachother. It also helps break relying on your symbolic understanding of what an object "should" be and gets you focused on seeing colors as they are and how they interact with eachother.
You could do up a bunch of spheres where you wash with the atmosheric color and then use the limited palette of the three chosen colors to render them, changing the palettes between spheres. I work traditionally with gouache so I recommend that so you can get a more intuitive sense for how colors mix. Digital mixing tends to skew oddly and needs some color theory to fix thats complicated for a beginner. Like you mentioned with the focusing 80% on keeping the ball under your feet, a lot of the technical stuff to render color digitally goes from complex to second nature when you've gathered rhe implicit knowledge of how paint colors mix in traditional media.
This is a really great video and I wish you well! Youve got a really good thing going here
Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I really appreciate it!
I will definitely try those out. I haven't even really worked any digital stuff in at the moment for that reason. It also seems you need a lot of knowledge about how the program works too which I lack.
I think the point you made about breaking your expectations is something I am starting to appreciate. Even working from photos, I have to really look at what colours are actually in there and consider how I will mix them.
This is so cool would you consider sharing the deck? (edit: nevermind i finished the vid lol even if you cant share the deck this was a really helpful vid!!
Haha, I would share if I could. Thanks for watching and I am pleased you found it useful.
I'd love to watch more videos about your learning processes :D I'm self--learning as a hobby and your videos have been very insightful thus far . I'm interested in what you have to say :DD
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed it. I have some more experiments and insights planned for future videos so hopefully there will be more for you to enjoy and try 😊
Hey, this video is amazing! I really enjoyed it and wanted to share a few thoughts. I'm deeply interested in utilizing metacognition for learning, as I believe it enhances efficiency across various domains. I'm not an expert in psychology or animation, but I've found these insights incredibly valuable.
Regarding some of your definitions:
Procedural knowledge isn't about creativity or abstract art-making; it's characterized by a systematic process or sequence of actions. For example, if I'm an animator with a specific workflow I consistently use, that's procedural knowledge. This workflow might range from a step-by-step plan for drawing figures in space to organizing layers, files, etc., for a director.
I think you might be referring to explicit and tacit knowledge, which are crucial concepts. It's not that declarative knowledge isn't useful for art-it is-but it shouldn't be the highest priority. Explicit knowledge is easily articulated and formalized, while tacit knowledge is personal and context-specific, often challenging to convey. It's intuitive and provides insights that are hard to explicitly explain. Creativity, I believe, is a blend of all these elements.
Here’s what this might look/sound like:
Explicit knowledge: "Hey, to enhance the animation's fluidity, focus on applying squash and stretch techniques to the face. The greater the force and speed, the more impactful these techniques become. At the highest velocity, you'll want to distort the form to this degree."
Tacit knowledge: There’s a common saying that used to frustrate me (and you’ll probably hear a lot too): "Feel the rhythm of the characters' gestures/emotions and let it flow through your hand." It took me years to fully grasp this. I can try to intellectualize this concept, but it would be quite lengthy.
To become a professional artist, one of the most vital skills you can develop is problem-solving. You'll face dynamic challenges that require inventive and flexible strategies. Right now, what you have is excellent for practice, but it lacks the "how" and, to some degree, the "why"-essentially, the "play." While practicing the fundamentals, consider engaging in projects that apply what you've learned to solve real issues. You'll find that starting with a blank slate can be daunting, but it forces you to think creatively and problem-solve effectively.
Metacognition is particularly valuable for honing problem-solving skills in art. It can significantly enhance your learning and creative processes. You'll want to leverage this for developing critical thinking skills, fractal thinking (which involves scaling from the big picture to detailed aspects), creating frameworks, identifying key ideas and their interconnections, chunking information, and more. This approach enables a deeper understanding and more structured application of artistic concepts.
Okay I don't think I can send links in youtube comments, but if you type Effective Art Study Guide.pdf you'll find it in the first link. It's on scribd. Draftsmen podcast and Volen CK are good ones to check on youtube as well!
Just wanted to say, keep this shit up man. I love seeing people think outside the box on things.
Wow thank you for such an insightful and knowledgeable comment!
I really appreciate you taking the time to explain all of that so well. I am certainly no neuroscientist, just a passionate enthusiast, and so I am always keen to learn more from others.
The point you make about having a project to work problem solving and creativity skills is actually something a few people have mentioned, so I am going to have to bring in to my work somehow.
This was very interesting, I am considering implementing this into my studying habits however I do have one question. If I go back to the foot ball analogy where you said they spend 4-6 hours a day just practicing the fundamentals if I continue on that theme when would the coach decide that the players need to add a new skill into there repertoire? If you always work on the same skill sure you will become the greatest ever at perspective but if you don't know how to draw a person or another object in perspective then you won't ever gain anything else. How do you decided to add a card to your deck, and when you add a card to your deck do you try to learn it a little bit before you add it to your deck or do you just add it and learn it when you see it the first time? Hopefully that makes some sense. Love the video Cheers!
Thanks for your comment. That's a great question. The football analogy is a bit loose. They practice that stuff more as a warm up, and then you are correct in saying that they train based on, usually, who their next opponents are, perfecting set pieces and strategies, as dictated by a coach. However, younger players at academies would spend much more time on developing the fundamental skills to the levels that are considered essential for advancement at that club. Most of us are probably at that more junior level in art terms.
If you consider your perspective example, imagine that learning perspective by drawing boxes is your start point, but you really want to draw the human head. I learned perspective from the How to Draw book. The anatomy book I use, which is Drawing Form and Pose by Tom Fox, actually talks very early on about how every figure should be drawn in perspective. When a card from that book asks me to draw the head, I have to remember everything I have studied previously about perspective, which I have now studied enough that it's a built-in reflex. I draw it automatically with no need for a grid and so can concentrate on what the head looks like.
If I had never learned perspective or was jumping straight into drawing heads, then I would be having to wrestle with learning perspective and anatomy at the same time! It's a much harder ask. The heads I draw would likely be wonky. The issue is not the anatomy, but the perspective the anatomy is in. As such, the fundamental skills, which I cover in my video on skill pillars, is always what I try to improve at first. When I feel confident, I work on something else. The time this takes varies. I think perspective alone took me a good few months and I still make mistakes.
I have a limited schedule, so I look ahead and only add cards if I have none due the next day, and typically only allow one a day, which is actually annoying because it slows me down, but it's all I can manage. If you add new cards every day, you can end up with a backlog, but Anki does now warn you of when this is likely.
Let's say I feel I suck at drawing feet, and want to improve. I will find a card I have on the foot and bring it into circulation. I just find the most appropriate one, usually the simplest one, which might involve drawing the masses of the foot. However, I would not bother learning to draw feet at all though, until I felt I was good enough at perspective, because perspective > the foot in terms of a return of investment for my practice time. If I can draw in perspective, I can learn to draw a foot, and that is the easiest order to learn these skills in.
When I prep the cards I am reading the book pages essentially, and writing the challenges, and I prep maybe a dozen cards in a subject I want to improve in at a time, so you could consider that pre-learning the material I suppose.
I find that when I start learning a card, I have to tweak the challenges sometimes, and the notes I take on them help me with this, so everything is flexible and open to being changed. It's very much a feedback loop based on my growth.
I hope that helps. If there's anything else I can help you with, please let me know. My next video will cover some of these points in more detail.
Hairdryer can mess up your paint as it blows too strong. You can get a heat tool, mines called Ranger craft it heat tool and was about 20 quid on sale. Its very hot though so move it around alot while drying your paintings. Drys the paint alot quicker without the worry of messing it up with too much air blowing across the page. Game changer for watercolour and gouache painting!
Nice! Thank you for sharing with me. I will check it out.
I never would've considered this method to be debatable honestly, it's what I've almost *always* heard from someone that got into college, built a career, acquired a skill, etc. Hell, it's how me and my sister got into college haha. I think ppl who train for so long in a single day and succeed at learning are definitely doing things right for them, but *most* people definitely aren't like that. Some of us are wired towards certain lifestyles, and when you use effort to take advantage of that, you can go really far. It just so happens those are the people we hear the most about haha
That's amazing, I love hearing stories like that. Well done to you both. It's definitely something that needs scaling to suit your lifestyle, which is why having Anki as a scheduler is so helpful, I think. Just gotta play with all this stuff and find what works for you.
Great research. What you found is very good.
I am glad you found it useful. Thank you for watching.
This video will influence me in a way, idk how but I guess thank you 🥰
No problem, glad it was useful!
I am implementing a very similar approach, but instead of digital anki cards I'm designing "pages" that I can print out and keep in a three-ring binder.
Behind each page I have a sleeve where I can store my attempts at the exercise over time to document my progress. I like having a physical book that I can flip through at any time. Just seeing these pages while flipping to another page is often enough to keep the information in the forefront of my mind.
Thanks for sharing your method! This video helped me see ways to improve my pages and what sort of information I can add to them.
That sounds amazing! Really good idea! I definitely find it helpful to record progress and review work in such a way.
Aw man!, this is so cool. I totally understand why you wouldn't share other's creators content. But could you share at least the title's cards so we can base off yours to create our own? im totally lost when it comes to using anki. I'd even pay for just the tiles haha
I am trying to come up with an Anki deck that features a lot of the exercises I do and consider key to my development in a non-plagiarised way that I want to make available later in the year.
A big part of the cards is making notes on them so each one is like an omgoing experiment you dive back into when it next appears, so I encourage making your own cards, but the ones I intend to make will encourage this and have space for it.
I'll try and get them out before the end of this year! Thanks for the interest! They will free BTW.
Both of my interests: Psychology and Drawing combined
Thank you for sharing your process! :)
You are very welcome! I hope it was useful to you!
I'm definitely going to get to work making an Anki deck over the summer. Do you have any extra tips for how to make them the deck? Especially for the tasks/ challenges.
I have a video on making the cards which might help which is part 2 of this video.
I make the challenge based on what the book page is trying to teach. So if it's a page on simplifying the figure down to boxes then I make that the challenge.
I might update or change a challenge over time as my understanding of the subject grows as well.
In general, as yourself:
- what lesson is this teaching?
- how can I practice this lesson to try and experiment with it?
Recently I've been looking into the concept of 'memory drawing', where you basically try to memorize how to draw a specific work by another artist or a reference image. I'm gonna try and use Anki to systematize that and see what comes of it. The idea would be to put a prompt on the front for a certain part of the drawing, such as 'sketch of Goku pose xyz' or 'anatomy for the right arm of Goku pose xyz' and then at the back have a traced version of the image to compare. I'm curious to see if and how that would be helpful
Sounds interesting! I am sure it would work. I have a similar idea for producing studies from master's works, quite common in art schools, or as a way to try and ingratiate some of a particular artist's or illustrator's style.
The only thing I would add is that I spent a long time copying anime and never got good at drawing it from imagination by all that copying. It took me going away and learning how to draw using things like perspective to make the biggest difference, but don't let that put you off. Everyone learns differently and I still like to sit down and just copy from my fave manga books now and then.
Thanks for watching 💕 let me know how you get on!
Thank you for your explanation, I really like your approach. There is one thing I don't understand though. Don't you have to first work through the whole book before being able to learn with the help of Anki cards? If I just tackle a random concept in the middle of an educational art book I maybe won't be able to understand what is being taught. I didn't study the previous concepts on which a concept in the middle of a book may be based on.
That means I have to work through eeeeevery book you mentioned before being able to use Anki and spaced repetition effectively, is that right?
Thanks! You can reposition any card in any deck to make it the one you introduce as a new card. That means for anatomy books, I can circulate cards on feet or hands or whatever from any part of the book, and cherry pick whatever I want to study.
My next video will show how, but it's the 'Reposition' option when you right-click a card in the Browse page. Just set the card's number to 0, and it will be placed as your next new card!
@@10.000hrsthank you, I think that clarifies it for me. Now I need to do the work of working through those books :D
have to admit this wasnt the usual "how to draw anything in 1 minute!" bullshit video I thought it would be. there is definitely truth to not just drawing things aimlessly but to actively recall later. the most helpful daily practice for me has been drawing basic forms from reference such as cubes and cylinders from reference. it benefits my ability to draw anything either from imagination or reference tenfold. I learned that my drawings are only as good as my ability to draw confident lines and convincing forms in perspective. of course shape, gesture, design language, etc are important but they are secondary to those fundamentals.
Wow, thank you. Those are some great insights. I think you are right, it seems that having a solid understanding of how form works and being able to draw it convincingly goes a long way towards being able to draw anything. I'm glad you've found things that work well for you and help you achieve your goals!
can't wait til someone would make a deck for this
Well for the workout example,
Generally more like 2-3 hours a day is best unless the goal is specifically to train endurance.
there is a major learning component, but rest is also important in working out.
And having a few intensive days and then strategic rest days is valuable, And that sort of is seperate from the general idea of space repitition early on. (Until spaced out further.)
Da Vinci specifically praised studying from nature, He had a quote I don't fully remember about how when artists only study those who came before they end up not bringing new elements.
I partially but don't completely agree that less is more.
I think that faster focused iteration is better than fleshing out really big things.
Except potentially when a lot of small things go into the bigger work.
It was common for the old masters to have 5 or 10 studies that went into making a masterpiece.
And some people can get stuck in simply trying to brute force making more and bigger stuff,
And don't end up making enough stuff.
If you only make 1 or 2 peices a week, without studies going into it, Then you aren't getting much iteration.
But if you have 10 or so pieces that are less than an hour and feed them into something bigger later the larger amount of iteration helps more.
I do think 1 hour a day is better than like 8 hours on the weekend and not practicing during the week.
From my understanding of spaced repition, in the ideal case, you want to have more frequent review and development early on and then space it out.
So ideally, you would spend more than1 hour on something spaced out within the same day, Then spread it out more.
Like
Do 1 hour in the morning 1 in the evening first day.
Then 1 hour the second day.
then maybe no day 3, 2 split hours on a new concept.
And then on day 4 do 1 hour for each of the concepts/practice areas being worked on that week.
Day 5 could be a new intro, Or could be reviews of concepts from past weeks.
Day 6 would probably review both concepts from that week.
And day 7 could review stuff from previous weeks as well.
That pace would give 2 new concepts a week, and allow practicing 4 things from previous weeks.
(Presumbably after week 3-4. Concepts could me moved from weekly to biweekly perhaps.)
etc.
Of course the time you spend reading and scanning the card is a form of upfront study, It isn't upfront practice.
That would land at about 8-13 hours per week, Which is pretty sedate. And not many more than the 7 hours from a strict 1 hour per day.
Of course, I think that principle could be expanded even further with a broader ratio if you wanted to.
You could do 3 1 hour sessions in the first day.
Or 2, 2 hour sessions.
It was pretty common for professional musicians to spend 30 min. to 1 hour practicing scales or other peoples works before going into a session of improvisation or trying to compose something from scratch of their own.
I like the excercise element of using anki, Although more generally I feel like spaced repitition is a bit overrated. Because memorization is in my view overrated to skill and intuition.
Being able to remember a specific formula is important but a lot less so than being able to use it.
And the context and ability to analyze a story or historical situation matters more than memorizing the dates.
Now you do need to look at the dates in context.
And I find things like timelines.
And taking a whole bunch of relevent or related events on one to be useful.
that sort of thing can be put in a discrete unti like a flashcard, but then it is acting less as a quick test of memory and more of a quick reference or tool to remind you to do a specific exercise.
Which is great, but you can't go through as many in most cases.
(Although some excercises can be don in 30 seconds or 5 minutes or so.)
If they are that fast, then you lose out to focus switching.
And in my view it might be better to just iterate on the same excercise for longer.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience!
I agree with you that spending maybe an hour in the morning and another in the evening would be better, but I sadly have a hectic job and can only do 1 hour a day currently. I think that's good for the experiment though because it represents an average person who has to manage life and learning at the same time.
I also agree that spaced repetition is better for the more declarative things you mentioned. My interest is whether a similar algorithm can basically encourage myelination to occur inside the brain in the most efficient way possible when deliberately practising a skill in a highly focused state, only when the algorithm tells you to do so.
In future videos I will discuss this more and how I also experiment with things like diet, exercise and sleep to encourage this biological process.
I'd love to see a study done to see whether this approach is more efficient than dumping say 8 hours a day into learning the same thing, and I hope someone smarter than me carries that out some day 😆 I just want to raise awareness of it.
Yeah, I got a job too.
I have been trying to learn to do oil paintings recently. Since I only did digital, markers, and pixel art for colored mediums in the past.
(And a tiny bit of acrylic.)
It's been going well, but it is a bit harder to iterate.
I have been doing digital stuff almost every day and making a 1-2 hour oil painting like 2-3 times a week.
Usually on Saturdays or Sundays I make 2 paintings in a row sometimes three. In like a 3-4 hour session.
I think I probably should spend a bit more time practicing drawing so that stays sharp and perhaps improves. I spend a lot of time studying drawing, pixel art animation, and ink rendering in past.
And I have totally done like 4 hours a day regularly for months.
But that is more a student in summer vacation pace than normal working person pace.
Currently I am technically averaging about 1 hour a day not counting weekends. But usually doing it as 2 hours every other day.
But once things settle a bit I might try to get it to where I alternate between 1 and 2 hours a day, or maybe even get a soild 2 hours.
I can't easily split it up though, since I already wake up at like 5:45 or earlier for work.
Except maybe if I can get it to where 100% of my dinners and lunches are meal prepped. And but time during the week by more weekend time.
When I first started drawabox I tended to do it for like 1-3 hours a day.
Which is when I started being really systematic about drawing for the first time.
(Not that I hadn't studied stuff like perspective and 3d forms a bit before then, just not in a disciplined deliberate practice way.)
And i would usueally do 6 to a dozen repeititions/variations of an exercise on a page and generally got like 6-30 pages filled with practice exercises in each session then.
And composition, figure drawing, and face proportions, face angles, and face lighting are also things I found fairly interesting to iterate on quickly in multiple mediums.
(Sketch, 4 value monochrome painting, black and white pixel art, etc.)
-Using simple shapes and silhouette and placing and layering them differently in differently shaped frames.
-Experimenting with arm and leg positions, etc.
-experimenting with different exaggerated ways of simplifying face shapes. Triangle shaped heads.
Square, more simplified circles. Noses higher up on the face, tiny foreheads. Big foreheads, Pointy chins.
Eyes further or closer together, etc.
-Taking two lights on a stand and taking a ton of photos from different angles or orientations of the lights Then making really simple greyscale paintings of it.
@@10.000hrs
Wow those all sound really solid exercises to do! I'll definitely try out some of those!
Sounds like you have a routine that works around your life which is the best any of us can hope to achieve when we work and stuff.
Good luck with all your studies! And thanks again for sharing all your experience, I learned a lot from reading your comments! 💖
Very cool!!! Thank you!!!❤❤❤
You're welcome, I am glad you enjoyed it 💕
Really enjoying this too - biggest question I have is that it seems you already have a decent amount of drawing practice (I watched the earlier videos where you went over your sketchbooks). Where would you start for a new artist who is at square zero?
Thanks so much for watching and taking an interest in this friend!
It sort of depends on what kind of art you want to produce. If you want to get very good at capturing reality, like drawing landscapes or portraits, then you can get into stuff like observational drawing, where you accurately try and capture the subject by measuring lengths and angles of the figure or whatever, and transferring those to paper.
If you want to draw from imagination, then those skills are not necessarily as useful, and you might be better off getting into things like perspective so you can start to draw imagined forms in a convincing way on paper.
For the more observational artist, there is a book called Drawing Course by Charles Bargue which is very old, but essentially tells you everything you initially need to know to get good at capturing the things around you accurately. There are probably breakdowns of the book and it's teachings online.
For imagination stuff, which is what I do, I found the book How To Draw by Scott Robertson to be a fantastic road map to teach you the basics. It does take a little while to pick them up.
Some people also rate the website Draw A Box very highly, which takes you through a lesson plan to teach you these basic skills.
Of course there is also nothing wrong with your live for art just being limited to copying your fave comic characters or whatever, and just having fun doing that.
I think having fun is the most important thing of all, but realistically if you want to reach the upper levels of this craft, then the academic aspects discussed above will be needed.
Hope that helps, and I wish you luck in your learning 🙏
I would like to put together something in the future to help people in your situation, so hopefully I can be of more help going forward.
@@10.000hrs Thank you for such a thoughtful reply!
I am in the overwhelmed with resources stage right now. I'd like to draw from imagination/concept art style (my biggest inspirations are John Park - his style, Robot Pencil, Ahmed Aldoori, Terryl Whitlach, and Kim Jung Gi). I've looked at courses like Syn, Brainstorm, CGMA and while I like the idea of a more structured approach to the overall content, the methods these schools seem to use is the "brute force" approach of pour hours in. I don’t have the capacity for more than 1-2 hours per day right now.
I taught at one of the top coding schools in the world for a few years and we practiced a very similar methodology (I'm a huge Barbara Oakley fan) to what you're doing here. Spaced repetition, interleaving, etc. Lots of mindset work too. Our students regularly ended up at companies like Microsoft and Google after only coding for 6-9 months.
At this point I simply feel like I have too many materials (I have the Charles Barge as an ebook, along with Scott Robertson's 2 books, a lot of the 3d total catalog, James Gurney books, Loomis books, other books, and then several online courses from various places like Art School and Schoolism, Aaron Blaise, etc.). I think I've done myself a disservice by overloading resources without a plan of action.
I'm currently working on the drawabox to simply start somewhere. And while I'm feeling like my basic linework is getting better, I'm not actually drawing things interesting to me. It feels like all drills with no play. (I'm using an iPad Pro with Procreate since it felt like an easy place to get started and my desire is to work digitally).
Very open to any feedback on a course of study and since you're looking to create something more beginner-oriented I'd love to be a guinea pig. I can record videos of myself starting at square zero if that helps and following along with the suggested curriculum and study.
My overall goal is to be able to draw creatures, characters, weapons, landscapes from imagination. To play and have fun.
Let me know your thoughts! I’m happy to chat more. I've watched all of your current videos and taken notes on methods.
-Nick
@nick.fredman Sounds like exactly what I did. I was overwhelmed. There are a lot of resources out there for sure! I wouldn't know many courses for total beginners honestly. Proko is the one a lot of people would probably recommend. They have some good foundational stuff. The rest I have found to be a bit more singularly focused, even over on places like Schoolism. They seem less suitable for total beginners.
I started by copying my favourite artists, and when I tried to draw like them without any reference, I totally failed. It's a completely different skillset. So we clearly need to go away and learn some academic things like how perspective, colour and light work.
Spaced repetition works in my opinion for learning this, but because it's slow, you really have to streamline what you study to make it the most relevant stuff, it seems.
I personally still think the Scott Robertson books contain the most efficient and applicable things to train to get to Kim Jung Gi levels (he taught John Park too) but it clearly takes years of training.
KJG also spent a lot of time studying from the world around him, building a visual library. That's another thing we need!
I think as long as you have started with something like drawabox, you will at least be moving in the right direction and can steer yourself more towards things you feel you need. You seem like a smart dude, so I have no doubt you will be able to self inform your development!
The drills are important, but I get that they feel stale and not fun. I often try to work them into being fun by doing things like drawing toys or robots or motorcycles because I love the designs of those things.
If you compare it to music or sport, there will be times you have to put in hours doing scales or sprints to master a specific skill, but then you can still put time in just jamming, or playing a match where you get to have fun and see the payoff.
You can drill the fundamentals less over time once learned, which is what I do, but there is always something you will be working at!
Good luck with it, and please let me know how it goes. I'll notify everyone when the resources I am working on become available so hopefully more like yourself can get to where they want to be faster!
@@10.000hrs Perfect thank you - I went ahead and revisted Proko (he has two pretty comprehensive courses now on drawing and digital painting) - I grabbed both of these and Ahmed Aldoori's course there too. Will work through them and report back! I'll probably do Scott Robertson's book afterwards :)
Awesome! Please do let me know how it goes. Best of luck 👍
Your so sweetTT.And your voice is very calming😅 thanks for the tips🤍
Haha, thank you, that's kind. I am glad you enjoyed it.
woah, really so interesting channel
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed the videos. 💖
The cat part was actually cute! Hope can see the cat more ;D
Haha she might make an appearance again in the future. She loves to stop me filming, and ruin my voice recordings by wailing loudly.
can you make a list of at least of the books you are using it =)
Yes, of course! I have captured many, but the main ones I work from are:
- How to Draw and How to Render by Scott Robertson
- Landscape Painting and The Landscape Painters Workbook by Mitchell Albala
- Drawing Form and Pose by Tom Fox
- Colour and Light by James Gurney
- Colour and Light (same name) by 3D Total
- Rediscovering Gouache by Aljoscha Blau
- the Propic Taco anatomy books
- Beginners Guide to Digital Painting by 3D Total
- Anatomy for Sculptors by Zarins
Hope that helps. Some are available as ebooks, and some must be bought physically.
So I have one question: I have been drawing on and off for almost 3 years at this point but during that time I drew very scarcely and I might have only improved like 10% during that time frame on the sole aspect of my motor skills. Only recently have I began to practice in a somewhat thought out schedule (for around 1 and half months now) which accomodates different art fundamentals like linework, form, shapes, etc. So my question to you (or any other well informed person on this subject) now is that, should I, as a relatively new consistent practitioner of draftsmanship, try and re evaluate my practice schedule/approach to better accomodate the meta learning concepts you talk about on this channel? Or should I try to keep this schedule simple enough so that I actually stick to it and dont quit cuz of the added complexity? It would be worth adding that I have the analysis paralysis problem and often overcomplicate the planning part so much that I compromise my execution and repitition parts. It also leads me to often get overwhelmed.
What you practice is most important, so if you are working on things like form, that sounds like a great start. I think it's better to stick to the consistent practice of this relevant stuff, like form, so if what you are doing works for you, keep going!
I suffer from analysis paralysis too. If you find a good book or course, it should break down what you are learning into easily managed chunks that you can try and build one at a time.
I like to use the cards in Anki to make notes about these chunked concepts as I go because I find that helps me personally to review what is working and where I am failing.
Something as simple as note-taking and reviewing at the end of each drawing session should help gently introduce you to meta-learning without overwhelming you.
If it works for you, cool. If not, try something else. That's essentially what I have been doing for years and have ended up here.
I feel I make progress faster than the days where I used to sink hours into drawing anatomy from books, yet then be unable to draw it from imagination when the book was not around.
Good luck! If there is anything else I can do to help you, please let me know.
@@10.000hrs that was very helpful, thanks!
I've considered using anki for spacing discreet drawing skills, but I have worried about what the review buildup will look like if I don't pick really small skills. I was imagining more like drawing basic shapes and small exercises.
I appreciate your ideas. I'm gonna make a calendar reminder to revisit this after my upcoming vacation. It's not a good time for me to start a new SRS journey right now.
You are absolutely right. The schedule can build up, which is why I am very careful about when I add new cards to study. I will cover this more in the next video.
It definitely takes a bit of trial and error to find a workload that fits your life.
Fortunately, I have had to adapt it to work with my 1 hour free a day for this learning, so I have found ways to bring the workload right down.
@@10.000hrs Thanks for the reply. I'll look forward to your next video.
Nothing helped me more than just getting lots of (very different) comics/artbooks and copying them cover to cover (or at least the best drawings that fit my taste) but that's just me!
There's definitely professionals with your mindset, but they often have a very "rule following" look like ModernDayJames or Proko. It's appealing and well executed, but I can't see this approach creating or inventing an exciting new style. Of course im in the 8 hours a day grinding camp, but i am a professional so it has worked despite being (extremely) inefficient, admittedly.
Good video though, we're all wired different, I appreciate your approach as i also have an interest in neuroscience since I'm autistic. Alot of being a professional is becoming about having a clear taste. Fundamentals will get you into the realism/photo copying market but as far as more imaginative work, you need a unique perspective with flavor and lived experience.
Thanks for sharing, that's really interesting! Always like getting input from pros!
I probably do fall into that camp you mentioned. Perhaps it's because there is so much to learn in drawing and painting that I just need a sense of order and a road map to progress logically.
Thanks for watching.
interesting video, nice
Thanks for watching ❤️
Ive been trying to give myself at most two hours to practice certain topics for each week. Right now, its arms and the next will be the legs. If there's no extra benefit to learning a specific topic for that long, Ill deff shorten the learning time to, at most, two hours, each day.
Does this also apply to other topics for the same day? Can I spend 1 hour on learning arm anatomy (via pomodoro method/break intervals), and then spend another studying color theory or mechanical designs? Maybe even add one more study topic?
I don't see why not. The only thing I would say is to maybe treat each subject as a dedicated session.
That means you would spend 2×30 mins doing arms maybe in the morning, and then 2x30 mins doing colour in the evening.
You might eventually find a way to combine both, like maybe painting arms for an hour, but you would be better off keeping the study subjects isolated until you are very comfortable with them, or you might find your focus gets split too much.
My personal experience is that training little and often is better than trying to brute force the skill to develop. However, if your energy and enthusiasm means you could happily study for a solid 3 hours, it probably wouldn't hurt. I think a lot of learning is about being in a receptive state of mind while doing it.
Hope that helps!
Very interesting approach. I started gathering all the books and courses I have and I’m going to try doing something similar. I’ve been lacking direction in my art learning journey and I really think that might help, if only just for the organization.
I was actually doing something very similar when learning cello a few years back. I made a bunch of flashcards of specific exercises targeting skills I needed to practice and that really made me progress more quickly.
Ah that's amazing! I have never played any instruments so it's good to know that this system has potential to work for a variety of procedurally learned skills!
Sounds like you got this! Good luck on your art journey friend! ✨️
I have big question that wasn’t addressed in the video. How do you plan the study of books that start with the basics and builds on those concepts for the later chapters? It seems that Anki just randomly selects cards (at least when first starting out)?
You can reposition cards so they will be shown next, and therefore control the sequence you learn in. If you head to the Browse section you can right click any card and reposition it to 0, so it will be shown next.
I started by going through the How To Draw book in order, then started to introduce cards on things I wanted to study specifically, so there are some basic anatomy ones I get shown now, and some on landscapes and gouache painting. I am starting to circulate cards on colour theory and digital painting atm.
The good thing about this is that if you decide you really suck at drawing feet, you can look through all your books to find a card that gets you drawing the masses of the foot and bring it into circulation for more targeted training.
The biggest drawback is that if you add a lot of cards, you get a backlog of cards to study, so some self-discipline is required.
I will try to address some of that in the next video!
@@10.000hrs thanks for the reply my friend. So I’ve been examining the method you’ve proposed here and have been coming up with an Anki gameplan of my own. I then compared it with my current study method and found out I don’t really need to change much. Your Anki method is great for those who want to commit to creating flash cards and following a regimented plan of attack. But for those who like a more freeform/traditional method of study, I propose the following:
Just study books/courses as normal, and do an art piece for each page or concept you learn. Do this until you finish the book/course. For pages in a book that’s just an image, try to copy it from memory (it’s ok to check back and forth as needed). After you finish the book/course, decide if you’d like to redo it now or at a later time. If you do redo the book, do it in order from ch 1. For each page you do, decide if you mastered it or not. If not, add it to the queue 4 pages from now (exact number is up to you). Keep this up until you have mastered all of ch 1. Proceed to ch 2, rinse and repeat until done with the book/course.
Alternatively, you can just pick a specific chapter to redo, if you only want to study that specific topic.
Hi and thanks for the video, it was interesting! Do you also work on longer painting/drawing projects? Do you have any plans or goals you are heading towards, like a career in the art industry or being a fine artist? I'm interested to know since that probably has a big impact on what you're practicing and learning with this method.
Hi! Thanks for your watching! Glad you enjoyed it. I do not currently have any long term projects, or aspirations to use art for a career. I would (and might) eventually try and do something like tell stories or make comic books, but I can currently only draw or paint for 1 hour a day, and so I spend that time studying.
If I could express what I am trying to do as a goal though, it would be to become good enough my drawing and painting to be able to accurately create the images I have in my head, so probably more drawing from imagination like Kim Jung Gi.
7:20 is there a name for this exercise you are doing on screen? a lot of the excersizes you do seem super useful, i'd love to see (whether from you or not) videos on them so I can improve myself.
That specific exercise was from the book How to Draw by Scott Robertson and is all about making hinges and flaps in perspective.
I don't have any tutorials currently but so many people ask for them that in the future I will produce some content to cover the specific drills that I feel have made the most difference in my own learning and understanding. Thanks again!
Thank you for sharing!! fascinating stuff! and very inspiring, especially for those of us who are trying to squeeze whatever kind of time they have left in the day into art hahahaa
question though,
- How many cards then do you do in a day?
I got the impression that you do 1, or do whatever fits in 1 hour, correct me if I'm wrong.
You are correct, just 1 generally, but sometimes I might do 1 before for a quick warm-up if it's something I find easy. I also sometimes work maybe 2 cards in one hour session as a single exercise. I probably couldn't do more that though, or my focus would get split too many different ways.
Thanks for watching!
Since starting to learn japanese around 2 years ago using mainly anki and immersion, I've thought about using anki to finally get myself to draw again on a consistent basis. My biggest doubt is whether cards pile up way too much (realistically, you'd probably just be able to study 1 card a day, no? What about when 5 are scheduled?), or too little (intervals quickly going up to months). In the end, it probably would've been best to just start and figure it out from there, but now that I've stumbled across this video: how did you handle these two problems? I'm sorry if you've mentioned it in the video, I'm watching this late in the day and might have missed it due to wavering attention span...
This was my question too. Isn't the piling up inevitable? That would demotivate me.
Yes! You are correct. The dreaded Anki backlog 😬 I will cover this more in the next video, but I can usually only train one card a day, meaning that progress can be slow.
I tend to look ahead at the schedule and plan my week of cards to ensure I will be keeping things manageable.
There are ways to spread a backlog, which I will also show, but it takes a certain degree of discipline to not take on too much at once.
One saving grace, though, is that some of the earlier cards I first learned are so simple for me now that I use them as a warm-up instead of spending a full hour on them. Things like 'draw boxes in perspective'. So I can manage more than 1 card a day this way, or combine ideas. I can turn those boxes onto human torsos to practice an anatomy card or whatever.
Definitely takes some trial and error to figure out.
Anki is on iOS. Or at least it was. The main dev used to maintain a premium iOS version which was where he got the money to keep working on Anki in general.
I've used Anki and SRS for language learning before, but at some point I just asked "Why not just read?" There are tools to help look up definitions of words, and if I'm reading a passage deliberately and actively trying to understand the words how is it any different than going through Anki flashcards? I'm still coming across words that are important to know, and even better I'm doing it within the context of a book that I like. Maybe the same can be said for art. I don't know anything about drawing, and I only roughly understand the SRS concept but if you're doing deliberate practice over a long period of time what's the point of Anki if not just a glorified flashcard?
Well, I suppose it pretty much is a glorified flashcard, but imagine a flashcard you write notes on that grows as your understanding develops in that isolated concept. Anki really just handles the schedule for you and stores everything in one place digitally.
You could just do deliberate practice on things you choose everyday if you prefer and I am sure you would get the same results. I used to write notes in my sketch book, and that helped, but then you end up with more notes than drawings, so I started writing on the flash cards themselves.
@@10.000hrs I definitely think there's merit in taking notes and creating cards in Anki, I can see how it would help to become more organized and streamline the learning process as you have said in your video. I don't want to give the impression that I'm thinking "What's the point", these are just thoughts I've been mulling over for a while now. I don't think anyone has the best method for learning, but the most important step anyone can make is to just "Get started" no matter what your method is. Also it's interesting to see how Anki can be applied to all aspects of learning, since really I've only seen it used for pharmacology and languages, I wonder what else it can be applied to... I guess pretty much anything!
Anki seems to exist for Mac and iOS now
What about emotion and learning?
I get it why you can't share your own anky, but I would be curious about a list of books you've used/found to be the most helpful
No problem, my bad for forgetting to add that. I will make a video entirely dedicated to the books soon. The main ones I use are:
- How to Draw and How to Render by Scott Robertson
- Landscape Painting and The Landscape Painters Workbook by Mitchell Albala
- Colour and Light by James Gurney
- another book also called Colour and Light by 3D Total
- Drawing Form and Pose by Tom Fox
- the Propic anatomy books
- Anatomy for Sculptors by Zarins
- Rediscovering Gouache by Aljoscha Blau
- Beginners Guide to Digital Painting by 3D Total
@@10.000hrs thank you very much!
I think the hardest (for me at least) and most important part in all of this is the skill of inventing challenges for each concept. It isn't obvious that the book will have exercises to apply the skill, and it is very much possible to make up a challenge that is a complete waste of time due to lack of understanding of the concept or 'missing the forest for the tree'.
How do you go about it?
Excellent question!
The honest answer is trial and error. Some pages genuinely have no lesson, and just make for nice reading so they get no challenge. Others literally have the exercise/challenge there on the page.
Sometimes, the challenge is not laid out obviously but can sort of be figured out as more of an abstract idea. Like drawing and trying to capture the thing you like most about an object or scene.
It's important to remember that you can always update the challenges, because what I find happens is that as you study a card more and more, your understanding of what the book talks about can change.
This means that sometimes I update or replace the challenges.
Nothing is set in stone so if you cannot think of a challenge,, don't worry. You might think of one later on after you are a bit more knowledgeable. A card with no challenge might suddenly be seen as an opportunity to work on a particular thing!
@@10.000hrs Oh that's an excellent point.
Thank you :)
Also: the thought is still not fully organized in my head however, I wonder about the usefulness of going over basic skills when you already gained some level of competency in a more sophisticated skill which apply the basic skill.
For example: Line making to box creating, to boxes in perspective to complected constructions.
I don't think there's much point in making a page full of lines if I'm already making boxes...? Does that makes sense?
(unless you change the idea of line making to something like 'expressive' line making in different tools and methods).
How do you take that into count while using Anki? Or does the scheduling fixes that, and once you have a card you've mastered you treat it as more of a quick warmup for old time sake (instead of suspending it)?
@mrmouse4121 I do exactly what you have described!
After a while of practising a skill, there really isn't any need to do anything more than review it every so often, and the most important fundamental skills that were originally trained in isolation become reflexes that you use all the time anyway on whatever you work on.
Perspective is a good example of this. Everything you draw uses it, so there is no need to review it every week once it's understood.
The schedule takes care of this because you can just treat them as very easy, and eventually they only flash up every few years! I do these easy tasks as warm ups for maybe 10 minutes on days when they appear.
If you find that actually you struggle a bit, then you can treat the card as hard again and work on it more often.
At the moment I spend a lot of time drawing heads and all the little things I have been working singularly like shaping the rear of the skull and the area where the neck and skull meet, I can now pretty much just automatically pull off when working on the next thing.
It's like spinning plates or juggling balls. At first, you can only manage one thing to focus on, but over time that thing becomes so easy that you do it automatically while working on the next ball and the next and so on.
Hope that makes sense! Once you get into this, I think everyone finds their own rhythm and becomes able to regulate their own training schedule at a pace which works for them. It definitely takes some trial and error!
Hi I love your videos, do you have any books you'd recommend on meta-learning?
Hello! The books that first introduced me to a lot of the concepts were by an author called Barbara Oakley.
She has a few books that are all good for getting to grips with a lot of the general concepts.
A more practical book would be something like 'The 4 Hour Chef' by Tim Ferriss, which is actually a cookbook, but the first chapter is all about meta learning. I think he may have made that chapter available for free 👍
Thanks for watching! I'm glad you have an interest in this subject 😊
Do you have the anki cars on the library or do I have to set them up myself?
No they are not available sadly. Mostly this is because they are made from books so that would be piracy if I share them.
But also the cards are used as a digital journal, and I update them when I study so it's best for you to make your own, personal to you, that make sense to you and your current experiments and skill level. Like having your own note book.
I would recommend trying it on a chapter of a book you like, as it's not for everyone and you don't want to invest too much time if you end up hating it.
Someone suggested making a deck from the content on Draw-A-Box so that might be a good place to start.
hello! first of all thank you so much for this video, this week i’ve been researching a lot on learning how to learn, because i love learning art but there’s not much information on the topic besides "just draw", i even tried to use a tool for note-taking called obsidian to take my art notes because i realized that a lot of concepts and activities presented in all the courses i’ve been taking connect in a way, so i wanted to see all these connections in my studies but seems like that won’t work because obsidian isn’t good at handling images so i wanted to ask if you are comfortable of course, if you take notes, if you do do you have any method or do you just write something quickly and then get to draw, if you do take notes, do you use any tool such as google docs or something else. sorry for all these questions but this is the first channel i’ve found that approaches learning art a bit similar to how i do it, so i would be truly grateful for any insight, thanks : D
No problem, I am glad to help! Let's say this is a brand new concept on a card I have just brought into circulation. I would practice for 30 mins, take a break, see what needs correcting, then go again for 30 mins. I then make notes just on what went well or what I failed at. Or even anything I noticed about myself while doing the card.
I might stop and make notes as I go, but generally, I record my thoughts at the end. For example, recently I have been drawing heads in cubes and found that sometimes I would start drawing the head inside my ghost cube and end up deviating from the cube, so I still have a head, but it's not in the perspective I set up originally. Why am I doing that? Would I be better off trying to sort of sculpt the cube into a head? Or draw a head first, then a box around it?
I try and consider different ways of doing the same thing based on the mistakes I am making, and because you can think so fast, I use the cards because they are to hand to record these thoughts and then when I see the card again, I have a save point to continue thinking from, a bit like saving progress in a video game.
I have not used anything like Google docs but if you preferred that, I see no difference in terms of how it helps you.
If you prefer, you could just make notes in your sketchbook, which is what I used to do, but then you make your sketches messy.
It's been a lot of trial and error but I would posit that the active engagement in the subject for that session and the note taking is helping to drive the progress forward, so however you do it, I think it's worth it.
If there's anything I can help you with, let me know!
Well idk this does seem like a good thing to study and i have had this question for a long time too. But without a control group idk how effective this study is cause there is no baseline to measure towards.
I think comparing muscle recovery to spaced repetition is not a good comparison cause the reson you have rest times is for your muscles to recover is you are tearing the muscles apart. idk how well that translates between different cell groups. Cause by the same logic you should be able to build muscle by following plyomerics training schedule. So working out 2 times a week but we know that doesn't work. cause they are just different parts of our body that have different cells that have different requrements when healing. also when you are studying you are not distryoing neurons you are growing new ones and making the pathway stronger. So that part is kind of iffy. I know that you might be trying to only explain things but idk if i feel as tho it does it justic.
Next thing is you said that pros studying 16 hrs isnt effective but you are going off the assumption that pros don't practice spaced repetition. The thing is a lot of pro artist recommend you to list out the things you are bad at and practice those. While they might not have a structured routine like yours they are doing spaced repetition just not as structured. by learning things they are bad at and recalling their previous information when they are applying it to a new drawing.
A lot of then recommend you to make a list out of your week points. And focus on those. Also when i am studying i just don't study one thing. I cycle between perspective, anatomy, colour and other things. So idk if the refractory period applies when you are learning different things cause our brain just doesn't shut down after learning a new information for specific amout of time.
And final point is that application of knowledge is also Very important. There are studies showing that too, i think. There is a reason why the most common advice for learning a language is to move the said locations and have conversations. I think that's the case cause there is space repetition + volume+ application. So all i am saying is cross modal approach is better then just 1 single approach and people who do art all the time probably do that. Cause they are obsessed with getting better. But hey that's just a theory.
Those are some fantastic points!
It's very tricky with no control group, and I would love to see one, so hopefully if people begin trying this stuff we can all improve the data and see whether this is more effective, as effective, or less effective that someone who spends hours 16 studying at a time.
The muscle analogy I gave is not an accurate comparison, you are correct, but while you are not destroying neurons, they get reinforced by a protein called myelin. The rate this protein can be added is limited, and only gets added when you are not using that neuron, usually when sleeping or doing something totally unrelated to art. That's why one person who trains for 100 hours straight might not actually improve as well as someone who only did 20 hours, over 20 days, but the science behind this and what actually causes the rate of improvement still needs developing. It might be that different diets affect myelin production or something. The amount and quality of sleep seems to play a part though, as does exercise.
Like you say, we need a control group!
How are you dividing your drawing time?
I typically practice for 1 hour in the evening a day because that's all I can manage most weekdays.
What I practice depends on whatever card is scheduled for that day.
I like to work in 30-minute chunks before taking a 5 min break, very similar to something called the Pomodoro Technique.
I can fill a sketchbook page with many smaller studies in 30 mins, or if doing a bigger study or painting, I will just stop and take a break before coming back to it.
I think a lot of it is down to experimentation and finding what works for you. You might find you can learn better if studying after waking up, so play around with it!
Hope that helps! Thanks for your question.
@@10.000hrsthank you so much! I’m in my 4th year in college and I’m soooo desperate to improve on drawing but I don’t know how I wanna go about it and I’ve never really seen anyone learn art like this but i wanna try it now 😂 I’ll probably do what you’re doing right now and draw for 1-2 hours when i can! Do you have any other social media where I can follow you?
No I don't post to social media, actually but might set something up soon. Good luck with your studies my friend! Give it a try, see what works for you, experiment, and find your way.
I was going to suggest using a bigger, flat brush for your gouache dog study, but right after I typed that, you tried the exact same thing. Using that small brush makes it too easy for you to overwork your painting and be fussy with it.
Haha thanks! Well spotted! It does seem to sort of force you to commit which seems helpful. I am trying to think more in shapes now too as a result.
I'm a big fan of anki, but i dont have an ios device. But im fairly sure there is an ion version. Ankimobile or something of the likes
Lol i use this app for medical school but it's really useful for everything
I think you can honestly learn anything with it, but not all fields would use it in the same way.
I have heard so many stories of medical students who swear by this method, and those who study languages.
I wish this was taught in schools and from younger ages because I think it would be a revolution in learning. When I think back to the school I went to and how they taught us I am surprised I remember anything 😆
I would say that buying a used book is virtually the same as piracy as the original author does not get the money. there's nothing wrong with using a service like internet archive.
This is the same argument when buying a used game at gamestop. If your not buying new the original creator does not make money but someone else does, Therefore the party selling is profiting off of someone's work.