Teaching yourself a new skill

It happens very often - you have a rather incompetent teacher or lecturer, and you end up having to teach yourself quantum physics, music theory and anything in-between. However, once we leave school or generally take up a hobby unrelated to academics, want it or not, we need to acquire the skill of acquiring a skill. Pretty meta, huh?

This blog post won’t tell you anything revolutionary, but it will deconstruct the learning curve for the most broad skills - in particular drawing digitally, for, uh, reasons xP

Step 1: Figuring out the particulars of a given skill/piece of knowledge and getting to know the subject.

In the example of digital art, when you get into it, you see all sorts of fancy layer names, digital tools, custom brushes, effects and so on. It can become overwhelming at first, so we should try to differentiate between the more general fundamentals and the advanced skills that will later help us develop our own style and create something truly unique. Something that often stems from this step if you are organised enough, is forming a plan for learning. It will be helpful to know what comes ahead, like knowing that after you figure out the controls on the keyboard to help you Undo (Ctrl+Z) easily, you get to know about more exciting elements - such as changing the opacity of layers, smudge brushes and glowy effects (and then spend most days learning new and new gimmicks, as there very rarely is a finish line when acquiring a skill).

Step 2: Struggling and getting the basics wrong.

Doesn’t start out like this every time, but very often, especially when you are learning something on your own with only web resources available, it will seem daunting and downright impossible to produce excellent work on the spot. It is also the reason why we look back at our old drawings and cringe - our taste and our skills have both improved and we realise that our current skill-set is lightyears ahead of what we could do when we first started off.

Of course, don’t let the missteps you take in the very beginning stop you from producing! A thousand subpar digital drawings of your favourite anime character are still very much better than a single drawing that you try to get right for months. In the beginning stages especially, quantity beats quality every time.

Step 3: After you become decent, find mentors and seek tutorials!

Practice, practice, practice! This is what most advice helpfully nudges us towards. And while it definitely is true that practice will get you far, a sailor going in the right direction slowly is still on the right way, but a person swimming in circles can push as hard as they want to - doesn’t mean they will get too far. This is where your personal taste (for aesthetics mostly) and your intuition can lead you to your idols, and in general to the people you want to imitate and whose work influences your own.

And it becomes easier with time to look at an artpiece of someone you admire and quickly figure out what exactly it is that you enjoy - whether it is the character, the outfit choice, the colouring, the shading style or anything else. After you notice what you like, try to steal like an artist. And no, this doesn’t mean reposting or tracing their work.

Once you know what you like in a particular artwork, try your best to understand it! You will very soon find out that the ‘secrets‘ of most good painters and digital illustrators is actually a pretty popular trick - maybe it’s shading with the Overlay setting in layer mode, or tweaking the characters’ proportions to look more comic-like, there are a tons of little sub-skills you will notice, and what is more, it is entirely up to you to make them part of your toolkit!

Step 4: Self-reflection, introspection and self-actualisation!

Those words can sound all zen and guru-ish, but it is a fundamental truth that the last and continuous step that happens at most endeavours is exactly this. You need to look at your work, judge it for what it is, and then use it as a reference point for growth. It is rarely linear growth, but for example, if you notice that drawing hands frustrates you a lot and they rarely turn out good-looking, you need to figure out what’s wrong and maybe try practicing it in your next drawing. Maybe you don’t know anatomy well enough, or maybe your perspective is a bit off. Whatever it is, keep a close eye on your progress and you will soon see improvements - remember, the more specific the thing you want to work on, the easier it will be to figure out if you’re actually improving. It is very easy to say “I’ll practice anatomy“, but it almost never leads to significant progress. Try instead to practice a specific part of the body, like the eye, the neck, joints, muscles, etc.

I hope this blog post made you think about your own learning journey and how much thought you’re putting into your new endeavour. Wherever you are on your artistic journey, it is always a good thing to know where you’ve come from (in order to feel good about the progress made) and to have a goal you’re heading towards (so you can figure out a way to get to the level of skillfulness you desire).

As always, do hit me up in the comments, and in this particular comment section, do share what you want to work on and what skill are you trying to teach yourself ^^