http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9069323583494421392
In the Netherlands it costs about 5000 euro a year to teach children to read (and write). Nowadays by the time they’re eighteen 99% can read.
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Yesterday I got a comment from some art teacher telling me that I had done something wrong in my Up side down drawing. (I didn’t actually understand what he was going on about).
He told me that he had been an art teacher for 10 years and that if I had been one of his students he would have made me do the exercise again.
This was the second time. Last year I also had some art teacher writing pages of comment about boring exercises she thought I should do.
So to every art teacher reading this. Let me teach you a little lesson about teaching art:
You have it within your power to instill a love of art in your pupils.
If you do, the rest of your teachings really don’t matter. Your pupils will be engaged in art for the rest of their lives. If you might have forgotten something they will pick it up at some point.
On the other hand.
You also have it within your power to instill a hatred of art in your pupils.
If you do, it still doesn’t matter what you further teach them because they will try their hardest to forget it as soon as possible…
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Follow three rules and become an expert on any skill you love.
I had a discussion with my counselor about the whole talent thing. How I had decided to spent much more time on drawing (and less time on other things) because I think that will give me a change to become an expert.
She didn’t agree. She thinks that talent does matter. She played a musical instrument in her teens. Although she practiced for years she never got very good.
Thinking about that I realized that she had a point.
My mother bought her piano in 1968 when we moved to Waddinxveen. When she died in 1989 she had been practicing for more then 20 years, strictly one hour a day.
But she never got any better then mediocre.
So how is this possible?
Why is it that some people practice for 10,000 hours and become world class artists and others practice for well over 10,000 hours and never get to be more the mediocre.
Is it talent?
I hope not.
Because if it’s talent I’m screwed. The last one and a half year have shown that I have no drawing talent what so ever.
A few years ago I bought a harmonica. It seemed like a fun instrument to play. It also seemed a fairly easy instrument to master even for someone with no musical talent.
But it turned out to be a very difficult instrument.
I had bought a few books on musical theory but none of them made any sense to me. And how ever hard I tried I never was able to blow a single note.
After a few months I gave up and threw everything out.
A few months ago my interest was rekindled by one of the videos Youtube recommended. I researched harmonicas on the Net and found a wealth of information on the kind of instrument you should start with and a lot of free music and some instructional videos on Youtube.
A nice read but I did nothing with it and wouldn’t have done anything if it wasn’t for the fact that I broke my hip and can’t leave my house for the next three months.
Getting rather bored I ordered a harmonica via the Internet and started practicing.
This time I found that the level of skill you can reach not only depends on your talent. It’s also depended on the kind of information you can get.
Thanks to the instructional videos I found I figured out how to blow a single note. And although I can only blow single notes for about 10 minutes it’s clear that I’ll get better with more practice.
But that’s the harmonica. An instrument that is played by hardly anyone in the Netherlands. And since hardly anyone plays it you can’t get much information on the instrument. But there are loads of people who draw. There are loads of good books on the subject and I have been researching the web since I started.
So does my lack of progress with drawing mean that I don’t have what it takes or is there something else I should take into consideration.
If I’d ask this question a week ago I would have answered that I suffer from a lack of talent. But this week I started with something I’ve never done before. I started with copying the work of other artists.
In doing so I figured something out.
Until now I’ve always tried to draw the pictures in my mind. Since that is the purpose of of this blog I never thought anything of it. Actually the only reason why I started with copying was because I ran out of subjects to draw but still wanted to draw something. Anything.
But in doing so I found that I had to push my self to get better results.
When I draw a picture from memory I’m the only one who know how the original picture looks. And since to me photographs, painting and drawing always look different from each other I’m easily satisfied.
But now everybody is going to get to see both the original painting and my copy of it.
I can no longer put up with the fact that there are hues missing in my drawing box. I can’t get away with adapting the drawing to my drawing box. I have to mix new colors to adapt my drawing box to the picture.
So in doing this drawing I’m learning more then I’ve learned in the last one and a half year.
I think that’s also the reason why my mother never got any better. Yes she did practice for 20,000 hours, but most of that time was spent repeating tunes she already knew by heart. She hardly ever tried new tunes.
By contrast. I’m finding that when I stretch myself and try something new I also get to practice the old skills.
If you want to be an expert at a skill you’ll need three things.
- You need the right kind of information.
If you don’t understand what you’re supposed to do, find an other book, website or teacher. - You need to practice 7 to 14 hours a week. Which means that you really need to love this. Otherwise you can get good but you’ll never be an expert.
- You need to stretch yourself. Spent the majority of your time practicing new things.
It is important to practice the skills you already know. But to become an expert you’ll have to try and learn everything there is.
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Two weeks ago I almost stopped drawing.
After trying to draw trees, landscapes, faces abstracts and using the teachings from two book it was more then clear that I don’t have any drawing talent what so ever.
It was also clear that I had to go through far more trouble then I planned when I started this blog. I just wanted a place were I could show the pictures in my mind in the same way as that other people show there holiday snapshots. They don’t have to take a course to learn to use there camera so why would I get so much trouble trying to do the same.
That was the point I reached two weeks ago when my involuntary holiday started.
Almost at ones I started noticing a few things. The talking in my head stopped without there being a clear reason why. I found that the more I thought in pictures the less the pain bothered me. (Which was a good thing because the pain medication didn’t work very good.) And I noticed that the moment I started thinking in pictures, I again felt the need to draw them.
At this moment I actually feel the need to spent far more time drawing then I’ve ever done.
It took me a while to figure out why.
A few weeks ago I came across an article about a book in which Malcolm Gladwell argues that there isn’t such a thing as talent.
From extensive testing scientists have found that there is a correlation between the number of hours that people have practiced a skill and there level of expertise. Or more specific that anyone can get to be an expert in any skill if he is willing to practice for 10,000 hours.
But that’s also the catch. 10,000 hours is a very large amount of time. To reach it you’d have to practice 7 hours a week for the next 10 years. Or 14 hours a week for the next 5 years.
For me it answers an other question that I’ve been asking myself for years: Why is it that experts always love what they do? Is that because they are very good in what they are doing?
No it isn’t. They are experts because they love what they do.
Start playing the piano when you’re ten. Practice two or three hours a week and by the time you’re 30 you will be very good. But nobody will think of you as talented because you’ve been doing it for 20 years.
But if you’re the kind of guy for whom drawing is the reason to get out of bed in the morning. The kind of guy who fails his tests because he was busy drawing and didn’t pay attention. It could very well be that by the time you drop out of school at your 15th or 16th you are considered a talented painter (or tattoo artist).
But why is it important for me to know this? Well I have two kinds of pictures in my mind.
A large part of the pictures in my mind are based on what I see of the part of the world in which I travel on a daily bases. Those pictures feel like snap shots and I need an easy way to show them.
Although it took a while I have found an easy way to show them by showing work by other artist. The world in which they live doesn’t differ that much from mine that I can’t use them to show my world. (Or actually if they do I don’t show them.)
Then there are the pictures of my own thoughts. Those pictures are far more complicated and I never expected to just show those pictures. It’s clear that showing my thought would be far more complicated.
The more complicated pictures take far more time to draw.
Until now I hardly ever drew them because I felt that they would come in the way of learning the easy tricks needed to show my snap shots. But now I know that isn’t true.
By taking more time to draw more complicated drawing I’m learning far more. Which means that I can draw ever more complicated thought.
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