ART – How Artists can Better Learn to Teach Themselves

The Simpsons Quotes:

So when I took the test, the answers were stuck in my head. It was like a whole different kind of cheating!
– Bart Simpson

When you haven’t got a mentor around, or when  you’re the only person you know who draws.  When the figure drawing teacher in your class is awful or if there isn’t even a teacher at all, how can you learn?

How do you improve your art when there’s no one who can help?

Today I’m going to write about some possible solutions to this problem, and it really begins with self motivation.

You can watch the video below or read the information on the post below.  It’s really the same info either way:

Teaching Yourself, the Skill of Meta-Learning

I’ve become very interested in the last couple of Months over the idea of Meta-Learning. I became aware of it, by reading the book,  The 4-Hour Chef  by Tim Ferris.  The subtitle of the book is, The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life.

There’s a section in the book called “Meta-Learning” where he brakes down the concept and teaches you how to teach yourself anything. I found this really fascinating.

Why is it important for us as artists to learn this sort of thing?

Well, the things you do when you’re meta-learning are very similar to the things you do when you want to teach somebody to draw.

It teaches you how to break things down, how to study it so you can do so. It helps you break a subject matter down to it’s building blocks. Then find what you really need from those building block and learn from them.

Bite Sized Chunks of Info

If you’re an artist and you don’t have access to anyone that will do that for you and if your going to have to do it yourself, it would be a good idea to learn to do it well. It’s one of the reasons why some art teachers tend to learn more about the subject that they’re teaching, than the students.

They have to break down a subject in such a way, that they can explain it to their students in a way that it can be internalize.  Break it down into small size bites so that the students can learn it.

The very process of doing that is a learning experience, and it help you internalize stuff. Once that’s done, you can practice what you’ve broken down over and over.

I recommend you get The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life, just so you can take the first steps into this mindset. This way you can also teach yourself, a better way to draw if you don’t have access to friends that can give you tips, in case you don’t have access to a mentor or to classes.

Above all, Make it Fun

But that’s not the only book I recommend.  I also recommend a book by the name of Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success by Aaron Dignan. The reason I bring this one up is because it puts forth the proposition that games are fun because we are learning something.  We’re learning to control a character, or a rules or something.

Part of the fun of playing games is the slow learning process you get when you play the game itself.  The best games have this thing called “flow” where they’re teaching you a skill that you don’t know, in such a way that it’s challenging but not frustrating.

If it’s too frustrating you’re not having fun, if it’s too easy you’re not having fun.  When you get the right balance, between too frustrating and too easy, that’s when you’re actually learning. That’s when you’re having fun.

Gamify the Process

That’s one of propositions in the book.  The book itself is about adding a game layer to life.  Trying to find a way to “gamify” your life. That way you can find ways to make things that are dull a game. If you can make things like that fun, then they are motivating.

Motivating yourself is really the tricky part we have to deal with most. Even in the The 4-Hour Chef there was a part about finding incentives for yourself.  He called it, setting stakes. Have something be at stake if you don’t complete what you’ve set out to do.

In a game, the stakes are, you don’t want to lose, you’re in a state of flow, you don’t want to stop playing.  Like if you play a game of Civilizations you want “one more turn”.  Games are really good at doing that.  Getting you into that flow.

Melding Ideas

If you want to learn to grab that idea from the book Game Frame and you read The 4-Hour Chef, you can combine the ideas in both books.  You might find a way to become a better artist. And you might be motivated to learn a lot of other things too.

And it’s fun. Learning is actually fun.

I just thought I’d bring those up.

I’m gonna be reading another book soon on habits and few other game design books and I might talk about those too. I’m really into this kind of meta-learning thing and I’ve been trying it out in my life.

Comment

How about you? What have you found that helps you learn that can make you better at drawing?

Pulp Simpsons Continues

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COMIC BOOKS/VIDEOS – Mark Waid on Digital comics

This was posted on Mark Waid’s blog a while ago but I recently became aware of it.  I thought I’d share:

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