How I wasted 14,600 hours on drawing.
And how you avoid it.
Subject: The 10,000 hour rule.
I started drawing from a young age around 5, And I’ve spent most of my time in school drawing, All my workbook and worksheets from school are full of drawings, My teacher will take my drawings and throw them away which is fine since I am the ‘I hate my work’ type. I notice training what I want is way more important then anything school is teaching. Luckily I got into an art focused college but even you are art focused in Hong Kong it only means four extra art class per week not like Math you have lessons everyday. If I take the lunch hour away and say 4 hours of drawing at school everyday plus weekends 10 years of primary plus college gives me around 14,600 hours on drawing.
Here in Hong Kong you can’t be just ‘Art teacher’ you have to teach other subjects like Chinese history so it’s more like Chinese history teachers HAS to teach art as well to meet the requirement. I remember during life drawing class I found out that I don’t understand the human head and started doing studies on my paper even drawing wrapping lines on them to understand form. But the teacher told me to stop and focus back on drawing a full figure at once so we can prepare for art exam. Art education felt like giving you the car parts and a picture of a car and ask you to build it. It doesn’t teach you how to get good, you just have to be good.
If I know two things back then my art would be way better today. Knowledge and direction, I had no idea what is good art I was blind I need a direction not just mind-less drawing. Second I had no idea how to get good at art, I had to learn that my art looks bad and kill my ego and start looking for answers myself. ‘What? art fundamentals? I’ve spent over 14,600 hours drawing according to the 10,000 hour rule I must be a master!’
“You have to identify the problem before you could fix it.” -Din
Until Next time.
-Din
Hello Folks, Studying value is one of the most important task as an artist, And even more so as a tattoo artist since we don’t have full access to full values when we are working on skin. So today we’re going to do a mid tone study.