Chapter Two: Quest Log
LESSON THREE
Actively Interact with Your Source Material
When you are Actively Learning, how you interact with your resource is just as important as what that resource is. Once you’ve chosen it, the only way forward is to start interacting with it. Regardless if that resource is a video, a book, a podcast, a tutorial, or even just a quick tip from Instagram or TikTok, step one is to choose a comfortable length of that material, be it a number of pages, a certain length of video, or a given section, you need to absorb what section has to say. At this step, your only job is to obtain and internalize that information.
For your second step - once you’ve hit the end of that duration and you feel like you’ve properly understood it - you are going to parse through it a second time to take notes. This is important because at this point you can start to make decisions about what parts you copy down so that you can practice it, and what parts might be worth leaving out.
Goals for Making Progress:
You are able to understand the concepts that you are learning
You are able to describe what you have learned using our own words
You are practicing these concepts by sketching or thumb nailing in your sketchbook
You are apply those concepts in your own art work
This means that you’ve reviewed the materials, jotted down notes, worked on a few thumbnails, and have developed a drawing containing the concept.
Goals That Mean You Are Actively Learning:
1. Understanding
Your first priority is being able to understand the concepts being discussed in your resources. This isn’t meant to be a hard hurdle to overcome, however your materials should challenge your current skill set, not overwhelm them. So as long as you are able to follow along and it offers to challenge your current abilities - you are on the right track.
3. Practicing
Since you are studying to improve your drawing skills, it is important not just to understand the concept, you need to be able to reproduce the concept as well. In this step you are going do a few drawings to accompany your notes and you can do this quickly by creating a few thumbnails. You can either copy some of the examples from the resource, or, better yet, create your own.
2. Verbalizing
If the content is easy enough for you to digest your second priority is making sure that you are able to explain the concept in your own words. This includes taking notes and writing or typing out what you have learned. The true test of whether or not you understood something is the ability to restate it clearly, especially to someone else who has no or little knowledge of the subject.
4. Application
Lastly, it is important that you are able to apply the concept either in a study or drawing while also including previous lessons or learned concepts within the same piece. This doesn’t need to be a fully rendered artwork, but at least a sketch, not just a thumbnail.
If you are not achieving one or more of these things, you are not actively learning.
Just reading or listening to your resource does not mean you have successfully reviewed your materials and have applied active learning to your study routine.
Taking some sort of notes does not mean you have successfully reviewed your materials and have applied active learning to your study routine.
Thumbnails do not mean you have you have successfully reviewed your materials and have applied active learning to your study routine.
Only when you have reviewed, jotted down a few key notes, made thumbnails and created a sketch, drawing, or painting, have you become an active learner!
Something that is equally essential to this process, is exercising your ability to bring multiple concepts together and enmeshing them into a single piece. Doing so expresses your ingenuity and mastery over the subject matter you’ve been studying.