**Art Blog - May 2024 **
I remember that when I started studying so many years ago what a difference it made in the fun that you have when you want to make personal art. Perspective, anatomy knowledge, and simplification. It was so hard to take it day by day and learn from doing assignments. The excitement was sickening and you want to ingest all of it simultaneously. The only problem for me was when you went back to making your own creations, the good habits would go out the door.
I also recall that when you start working for other people that you dont have as much time for studies. "Soon." You will tell yourself. As you start to see your natural decline in line work, and other 'powers' slip away. All at the mere cost of benefiting other peoples profitable products. The phrase, "The magic is in what you are NOT doing" cuts deep.
One can look back and wish "I should have never stopped studying." But there is no time to plant a tree like 20 years ago, or the present. Try to remember the joy in it that brings a world of hope and wonder to your own creation. The feeling of that first time the thing you were struggling hours, or even years with, was suddenly no struggle at all.
I have seen my own improvement mainly by helping others over the years. And reading. I encourage you all to buy books that modern day masters are producing with lots of words and less pictures. Go through it as fast as you can ingest. Mainly understanding it. The answers are all there, for very very cheap. Even when I went to school some of the books that we were asked to go through I had already purchased but never studied. I just paid for someone to tell me to read the books I already owned.
Knowing that, it is still (for whatever reason) so hard to find the interest in studying for my own improvement. The limited time that one has cries out for satisfying technique application, popular style, or career improving portfolio pieces (which never seem to manifest no matter how much you think about it happening).
I often wonder why it is easier to find the answer for someone else who asks. I probably just dont want them to wander through the clouds wondering where they should land the way I did. And for some reason I consider that to NOT be a waste of time like when I study for myself.
Just remember, to those out there just starting, that if the phrase, "Something feels off." pops up in your social circles, Its the perspective. Its always the perspective. Go draw some cubes.
