3 Keys to Becoming a Better Artist
We quickly mentioned what makes a motivated artist in the interview with Goodname’s lead artist, Erikas Perl. In this post, we are going deeper in the subject, and highlight three potential keys to improve yourself throughout your career. Talent isn’t the main ingredient of success as we could imagine, but work, passion and challenges are. Let’s see why…
WORK begins with learning, but should you choose art school or study on your own? Everybody needs to find which way suits him and makes him grow as an artist. Starting a career with solid basics is important, but we shouldn’t forget that constantly studying and polishing your skills is a way to stay in the race. You can take a step back from your work, search for your weak points, and look for means to transform them into strength. A sketchbook or a tablet enables you to draw whenever you want, which is a good exercise to keep drawing in other conditions than your usual work. Studies can also be a good technique to improve yourself. Copying a traditional painting for example, aims at understanding how the artist reached that result. You will explore the technique, the composition and which brushes, values, colors are used and for which purpose. It can be interesting to pay attention to how other artists paint and search for their feedback.
It is never too late to CHALLENGE yourself, there are so many ways to achieve that. Going out of our comfort zone makes us improve faster, so you can try other medium, technique, software, brushes. Inktober can be a good example for those who wish to master ink. Every day in October, you train to paint a subject according to the prompt list of the year. On social media, many artists share their sketches and give feedback to each other.It can be a nice experiment where you relax and work at the same time. If you want to have a guided daily challenge all year around, you can find many similar concepts on the Internet. Artstation launch more professional challenges involving artists from all over the world and professional judges. Both can be interesting sources of inspiration! Speed painting a difficult subject can help you improve your art. You will have a short amount of time to develop skills you don’t master yet. For further details, you can read the related article. Painting with the other hand and forcing yourself not to use ctrl+z on Photoshop can train your brain to adapt. Challenges are made to push yourself out of your comfort zone.
In this part we won’t talk about passion for art, which is already important when you are a painter, but more about interests in other fields. It can be a PASSION for a historical period, mechanics, fashion, interior design, architecture... Because you are interested in something else than art, you will naturally gather references and knowledge which you can reuse to create high-quality and more believable work. Every subject you are interested in, can become a plus in your career, a specialization in the future maybe. For example, if you are fond of cars, you will be more likely to paint them, or if you love traveling, you gathered references by taking pictures during a trip. In both cases your personal knowledge can bring useful elements to a project. Being aware of the social or historical context, you can create historically correct characters or buildings. This possibility to bring together two passions in your work can give you additional motivation to complete the best painting.
By not giving up these three elements during your career, you should see a continuous improvement in your art. Everyone has their own habits, so if you have other keys to open the door to success, let us know in the comments :)