Common Mistakes

Passive Learning

The number one mistake students make when reviewing materials is interacting with the resource passively. Meaning that they read their book, watch a video, or review a tutorial - but they don’t really engage at a deeper level. They don’t take notes, they don’t think critically about the information they have interacted with, and they don’t try to actively apply what they are learning by practicing the concept. 

This will all amount to a slow advancement in skill, especially when you are trying to rely on this form of information gathering as your primary form of learning. With this, you are likely to forget or overlook the more important bits of information that are crucial to the theories you are studying. We should be relying on our skills of note taking, studying, and the ability to restate what we learned in order to fully utilize a resource.

Stalling Progress

Another common mistake students make is halting their progress entirely by obsessing over a single, often arbitrary, skill. It is not unusual for a student to come to a point early on in their learning, such as an exercise on drawing circles, and becoming fixated on their ability to draw a perfect circle before they allow themselves to progress any further into their materials. This can cause people to focus on this skill day in and day out, getting frustrated with the exercise, and burning themselves out. 

Although this may seem practical, as in many cases you should be proficient in one skill before moving onto a more complicated one, but with drawing, this is not the case. Often, improvements are more gradual and are more comparable to working out. When you work out, you don’t focus on building up one single muscle group at a time, you allow many muscle groups to develop over a longer period of time. You should approach learning how to draw in a similar manner.

Overachiever

While it is important to keep a steady pace and proceed through your learning materials without getting bogged down on just one skill, the other extreme can be just as devastating to your progress. Switching between subjects too quickly, and not spending enough time to thoroughly understand a concept, or doing too much at once can make it just as hard to progress your skills as not doing anything at all.

Students might approach one subject for a few days, or a week and jump into a completely different subject for a similar amount of time, and then yet another. When they get back to learning the first subject, they find themselves needing to retrace their steps and refresh their memories, before they can advance in a significant way. This leads to frustration for most students, and years or circling the block.

The Skipper

Something that is very tempting to do when you are interacting with a new resource is to simply jump over some of the more basic topics that are commonly found in your books, tutorials, or videos. This can include sections that talk about basic materials or techniques that you have already seen before. It seems like a no-brainer to save some of your precious time by skipping over things you feel like you already know. By doing this you can jump into the sections that are either more interesting, or include the meat and potatoes of the resource, so to speak.

However, I highly recommend that you be prepared to - at the very least - review these sections when you are learning from new materials. Re-reading, taking notes on, and even practicing these techniques serves to not only reinforce that information so that it is always at the forefront of your mind, but it also keeps you sharp; never having to question what you think you know about those topics. Do yourself, and your artwork, a favor by studying the right way.     

Lone Wolf

Lastly, while these other mistakes involve how you interact with your resources, let’s discuss the issue of going your journey alone. In general, it is not required that you join a local class, nor are you expected to spend a lot of money to gain access to some high end artist networking site. However, having no one to talk to, bounce ideas off of, or discuss various artsy topics with can lead to a lot of lonely nights trying to inspire yourself to learn, or spend time drawing. Joining a group that mirrors your interests and aligns with your goals can be a huge morality booster, or at the very least give you an environment to relax in. This could mean finding a group that you get along with, finding people who have similar interests, but it also helps to join a community that aligns with your passions. You might just enjoy the environment, or you might find that they uplift and inspire you to do the best you can. Either way, various needs can be met by joining a community like ours.