Draw, draw, draw. Not just draw, but learn how to see, learn how to look. Isn't that what art's about?
Art is about learning to communicate a story to the viewer—your story.
If not the viewer, then to communicate your artistic creation between you and the surface you're working on. But to communicate, you must understand the language, and without the Rosetta Stone, it's hard to know the keys. One of the biggest keys in art is to draw at a high level.
I've been in art full-time for over 30 years, and I have yet to see an artist who paints at a high level, who doesn't draw at a high level, and I know I've said this over and over again.
In the world of counseling, when your spouse tells you something that you've already heard and you are hearing it again for the second, third, fourth, or fifth time, it is not that your spouse is having trouble remembering that they told you this. It is that they are having difficulty seeing change, and therefore they believe you haven't heard this.
So here I am again telling you to draw, but not just draw; also, learn to look harder to give yourself a chance to slow down, a chance to enjoy the day. We get so consumed with immediate gratification with social media and raising our kids that we sometimes lose sight of who we are. It is my goal for you to sit down somewhere, enjoy the day, and, to quote a famous Hallmark show (therefore it must be true), learn to sit in a café, enjoy your food, meet the people around you, and see what is happening without ever picking up your phone.
That's the battle right now—to get you, the artist who has a desire to do art, to learn to slow down, learn to draw, and blend your strokes without showing any of your strokes, and to do this without smearing with your finger or the use of a stump.
I believe that is the beginning of learning how to see because one day when you're painting, you're going to have to notice certain color relationships between their intensity and value and compare the intensity and value to the color next to it.
You won't realize that a major drawing concept called "figure-ground relationships" between those two colors is carrying the message, no different than seeing Sargent's paintings and realizing it is that subtle value and intensity difference between those colors that is carrying the message.
So how do I summarize that's easy—draw, draw, draw. Start by going to lunch and putting your phone down for that brief time, enjoy your lunch break, listen to silence in the air. Listen to the sounds around you; it's your time, you've earned this right for a break. I could have told you to buy my Rosemary... but I did not :)
