These 6 tips are super easy to implement in your life and will ensure that your art does improve in 2023
Do you want to improve your art and get better at drawing and painting this year? The beginning of a new year motivates a lot of people to create new resolutions. But the hard part is sticking to them. With these 6 easy tips I want to help you stay on top of your artistic goals this year.
1. Create Habits
We all know that consistency is key. And there is no exception when it comes to your art skills. If you want to see improvement in your art quickly you need to practice regularly.
Create a habit of drawing daily or every other day. It helps if you set yourself a specific time everyday where you plan on drawing no matter what.
2. Set yourself weekly goals
Setting yourself weekly goals helps with keeping track of your drawing/painting habits. A weekly goal could be as easy as producing one painting. And if you create one painting every week, as a result you will have 52 paintings by the end of the year. And isn’t that a number to be proud of?
For instance, my weekly goal to improve my art and especially my oil painting skills this year is to paint for at least one hour for five days of the week. One hour is a manageable amount of time and it keeps me in the habit of painting.
It doesn’t pressure me into thinking that I have to spend three to five hours to make a painting and therefore allows me to paint more regularly.
If you set yourself small goals you’ll be more likely to stick to them and it will feel great and motivational if you do.
Other weekly goals could be to try a new medium, fill a specific amount of sketchbook pages or to just draw for four days of the week.
3. Do studies
If you want to improve your art and drafting skills it is important to do studies. To clarify, doing studies of life, pictures or other artists work, helps you in understanding colors and values and in learning new techniques.
Studying the figure is especially important if you draw/paint humans. Getting the proportions right and incorporating the line of action will improve your art significantly. Therefore, if you don’t know what to draw or paint do a study.
A great free figure drawing resource is Croquis Cafe.
Another awesome resource is this figure drawing book by Michael Hampton.
4. Get Critique
Yes, you shouldn’t rely on other peoples opinions. But it can be very helpful to let your finished artwork be observed by others. Show your art to friends and family or share it on social media and ask what is working in this piece and what’s not.
This will help you see mistakes, like wrong proportions, and prepare you to pay more attention to it next time. Also don’t be overly attached to your artwork as this helps to look at it with objective eyes and lets you cope better with critique.
5. Take Breaks
As important as it is to practice regularly it is also crucial to take frequent breaks. In other words, don’t draw daily if you know this will lead to you burning out quickly.
Rest if your wrist hurts or if you do not feel like drawing that day. Instead come back the next day or the next week. This way you’ll be more likely to stick to your goals.
6. Don’t Compare yourself to others
This step is as essential as the others are. Comparing your progress to someone else’s will only make you feel bad. You might see that 14 year old artist and think “wow, I’m not even that good at double that age”. But this artist might have spent more time practicing than you have. Or they are only good at this specific style and subject.
Everyone is on their own journey to improve their art and everyone takes their own time. Get inspiration from other amazing artists and then go create your own art. You never know, someone might look at your art and admire you for it.
Also please keep in mind that your worth is not measured in followers.
Now You are ready to get creative!
I hope these tips were helpful and inspire you to keep working and improving on your art journey this year. I would love to know what your goals (in art and life) for this year are so please let me know in the comments.
If you have any additional tips I would love to hear them so we can all motivate each other.
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