There are many artist's out there that are kind enough to share their views regarding this topic
This post is mainly a quick view of how i perceive it and my thoughts on the subject.
Just like many things in art there are no wrong or right way to do something,however I do believe that there are more effective and efficient approaches to learning and gaining knowledge, specifically when i study from master paintings my thought process and approach tends to defer from each study i do, and recently I've started to really think how to target specific goals and really think about what i want to achieve and how i can apply it into my own work. Rather than just mindlessly copying and doing master studies for the sake of it. Which ive been mainly guilty of for a longtime, until one day one of my teacher pointed it out to me and helped me really question and understand why we do studies in the first place.
Often as beginners, when we are told to do master studies we find it difficult or don't really understand the concept of why we do them or to what benefit, we just know we should be doing them.
As mainly a painter myself the general things I like to evaluate when im studying are:
- Shape/Design
- Patterns/Texture/
- Lighting/Composition
- Colour
However this will likely be different from artist to artist and what they want to improve. Character orientated artists will likely study anatomy, body language, expressions etc.
For me i think the best way to know if i truly understand something is to not only practice but evaluate whats working and not working in my own work and have someone else whenever possible to have a look for feedback, in case my eyes may not have picked up something. Another good method is to kinda think like an engineer and deconstruct the subject completely and re-merge back together again and then recreate the subject with your own taste from memory.
For me personally ive found writing down a lot of notes and drawing over what im studying has proven to be very effective and has made impact on my own work.
Now there's a question of how long should i spend time studying and for me personally it changes depending on what iam struggling with but most of time i try to keep it under 1hour, also recent scientific study suggested that the brain can only attain 4 hours of information before it needs to rest and retain new information and re-energize. Also these days i like to paint only maybe a portion of the painting if specifically if i want to learn to paint certain materials or texture. Sam Nielson's sphere tests an awesome and quick way of experimenting with aspects of light, colour texture all together at once because you don't have to spend too much time rendering everything from your reference but only pick portions of the image and try to replicate the finish or visual appeal only on the sphere ball.
Well there we go there's just a quick and very brief summary of how i like to study for the time being and i continuously try to develop my approach and learn from others in order to find a more effective way.
Would love to hear your thoughts on how you guys like to study. Feel free to comment below.
Also if you want to hear from more inspirational and more awesome ways of studying effectively from other artists, i definitely recommended these two amazing people and listen to what they have to say on this matter.
Noah Bradley
Anthony Jones
Now.. next time you sit down to study try asking yourself "am I really learning or just mindlessly copying"
Thanks for coming to my blog
Happy Painting :)
Oliver Tsujino
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