No Progress in Your Art? A 5 Step Routine to Nail Any Skill!

Hey everyone!

Quick announcement before continuing with today's article:
Navigating the extensive range of content on my Patreon can be overwhelming, especially if you're new here. To address this, I've updated the pinned post to serve as a beginner's guide. The guide simplifies my creative process into four easy to understand categories:

1. Concept
2. Shapes
3. Colors
4. Values

But that's not all. Patreon's new "Collections" feature provides a practical tool to further streamline your experience. In Collections, you'll find these four categories filled with tags corresponding to specific art topics. The beginner's guide is your starting point, and Collections is your tool for easy navigation. I encourage you to use both as you explore the full range of content available on my Patreon. 

Beginner Guide: https://www.patreon.com/posts/85347652
Collections: https://www.patreon.com/ramonn90/collections
End of the announcement

That being said, today's post is a continuation of that subject. Let's assume you now understand my process, know where and how to find the articles to improve the different categories, and now you are asking, 'What's next? What should you do?' Well, in today's post, I'll help you build your own routine of exercises so you can put all my theory into practice!.

The quick answer to getting better at drawing or painting is actually doing the drawing and painting. However, not all methods you find will be equally efficient. So, my goal is to give you a simple plan based on the experience I had executing it.

1. Goals
Don't aim to recreate the Sistine Chapel on the first day, week, or month of training; start simple. Focus your first month on mastering one characteristic, such as shapes, which I consider the toughest yet essential one.

Down the line, when you're more comfortable, you can up the level of difficulty by choosing a more complex reference or technique, or by blending two or three categories, like shapes and colors or shapes, colors, and values.

Goals are crucial because they give you a sense of direction and keep you motivated. So, make sure to set realistic goals based on your personal experiences.

2. Schedule
Before even touching the canvas, open that notepad or pick up that pencil and paper. Based on your current life routine, write down how much time you can invest in your daily practices. You want to see progress? You need to put some order in your life, and the best way to start is by gaining clarity in your timeline.

Let's assume the worst case scenario: your life is a mess and you don't know where to start. Take 30 minutes out of your day and sit to do the work. In the next few steps, we'll clarify everything for you to maximize the limited amount of time you have.

Why 30? Thirty minutes is the minimum I think anyone can spare. If you have more than 30 minutes, proceed to a different exercise or study form; the point of being quick is to keep you from getting stuck on the same challenge. Building this skill set is like collecting visual information; the more you collect, the more tools your intuition gets to come up with solutions. It's not about replicating the reference in detail, but understanding its composition in the subject you're aiming to master.

Most months have four weeks, so we're looking at around twenty practices you'll complete by the end of the month. That's a pretty straightforward goal, and I'm certain your first practice will look vastly different from your 20th.

3. References
After you identify which aspect of your process needs improvement, it's time for some research. Gather images that will help you focus on that specific topic. I use Pinterest, and I've even created a board for you to explore. But remember, this process is highly personal. Look for images that captivate you to maintain motivation through days and weeks of practice.

Why not just make art out of imagination? Creating art from imagination is basically using your memory. Instead of that, using photographs saves a lot of time in terms of execution. These studies are mainly focused on technique, improving execution, and understanding reality. The better you understand how reality looks, the easier it will be for you to distort real-life visuals by choosing their fundamental symbolic composition and translated into shapes, colors, and values.

4. Start simple
Ok, now you have your set of references and it's day one. What can you do? Well, pick up simple challenges. What do I mean by this? Since you're reproducing what you're looking at, don't aim to reproduce the whole picture from corner to corner. Choose a focal point and invest effort and energy on that center point. The further you are from the center, the sketchier you can go.

For instance, when I was studying portraits, I focused on nailing the eyes; that's where I put most of my effort. To this day, I still do it that way. For the rest of the month, the nose and the rest of the face can be a little looser, and for the body and other parts, just suggest shapes, colors, or values.

5. Sharing is caring
Sharing your process won't directly speed up your skill-learning curve, but it does boost an equally essential part of the process, which is 'motivation.' If you have solid evidence that you can keep doing one task day by day without any social feedback whatsoever, go ahead! But if you're like me, a person who likes to show accomplishments and share some of the process, then please go and share it. Maybe on your socials, maybe in our Discord group, it doesn't matter as long as you do it. For me, sharing is the final step of my process; it's how I close one experience and open another. It's also a great way to connect with people who share the same interests and helps me grow in some way. By sharing, you also get to understand the kind of reactions your art evokes in people.

For instance, if you've been sharing drawings of noses and one or two people react, you get a sense of measurement. Maybe one day you share a drawing of an eye and get five reactions instead, that's a signal of something. Maybe it's the structure of your art, maybe it's the concept, maybe it's because that day more people where active. These are phenomena that only you will experience, and it's important to notice since it's real-time feedback.

The amount of traction your art gets doesn't equal its quality. Many different components might affect this number, so please stay as critical as you can of all the variables. This way, you can reduce the emotional weight we might assign to a number that doesn't correlate with our effort. It happens to me, and I think it's a very human thing; the more conscious you are, the better.

Conclusion
Think of this article as a recipe; the only thing you need to replace is the subject of study, and then apply the same general structure. I've covered the essentials so anyone can try, but feel free to make your routine more complex based on your capabilities and time. The key here is to understand this isn't a sprint; it's a marathon for life, so focus more on resilience than speed. If you're investing in my Patreon, it means you're taking this business seriously, and my goal is to help you achieve yours. So stick around on Discord, where we have a 30-min daily challenge and other socially important rituals that might keep you motivated. This journey isn't easy, and you don't have to go it alone!

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Welcome to all new patrons. Feel free to drop any questions here in the comments, via DMs here on Patreon, or in our Discord group. I'll be more than happy to answer and see your progress.

If you found this article useful, please drop a like or a comment! I appreciate the feedback and also criticism, I want to improve and give you the very best.

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Thanks to your support!