"darwinist" <darwinist@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:eb2b5c34-45a0-4165-ad57-97ec515a4b82@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> There are lots of things you may want to get good at: Things required
> for your job, hobbies, games, social-interaction, creative arts,
> cooking, managing time, managing money, making scale matchstick
> replicas of famous architecture.
>
> Whatever you want to do and do well, it's im****tant not to make your
> education too narrow, or put all your eggs in one basket. For example
> you can read all the books you want about drawing but there's a lot
> you won't learn until you start drawing for yourself. The physical
> skills and spatial awareness that you need to make a picture work, and
> your own particular strengths and weaknesses won't become apparent
> without practice.
>
> That doesn't mean that reading about drawing won't help. A lot of
> useful techniques or exercises can be learned from the experience of
> other people, and someone with great skill and accuracy might still
> have a very limited drawing style until their eyes are opened by the
> examples of others.
>
> Habits matter as well as skills and knowledge. If you only do rough
> drafts of something before moving on to something else then you won't
> end up refining your work or learning as much as you could from what
> you've just done. If you draw every part of every drawing at the same
> speed then some parts won't get the detail that they need while others
> will take up more time than they should. If you wait until the idea is
> perfectly clear in every detail in your mind before you start drawing
> then you may never get started, or you may only be able to work on the
> most simple of pictures. On the other hand if you never stop to think
> or re-*****s how the picture should look and just continue making
> marks on the paper then you may end up with messy, cluttered work that
> you don't like no matter how much you work on it.
>
> Besides your ability at the specific task, there are other things you
> need to learn to make drawing a rewarding and balanced part of your
> life. Any activity can conflict with others. If you spend too much
> money on drawing supplies then it will conflict with other things you
> need money for. You could instead do most of your stuff with cheap
> pencil and only choose some things to refine with more expensive inks
> and paints. You could also spend too much time on your drawing, or do
> it at the wrong times when you've got im****tant things to attend to
> that are more urgent, while really the drawing could wait. The reverse
> of using too much time and money is also possible, and if you don't
> make enough room in your life to draw, then other things will trample
> all over it.
>
> One of the most useful things you can do, is execute complete drawing
> projects, big and small, from start to finish. This tests all of the
> things you need to learn about drawing in real-world conditions. You
> could do a lot of little drawing exercises to refine your skills, and
> you could make grand plans for the kinds of big, complete drawings
> that you'd like to finish, but these two things alone won't teach you
> about the time-management, re-drafting, refinement, persistence and
> balancing with other parts of your life that are required to complete
> real-life projects.
>
> It can be very useful to engage in exercises where the product doesn't
> really matter and the only goal is learning and practice, but when you
> move to real-life projects there are often obstacles you didn't
> expect. Theoretical knowledge can also be very useful, but when
> applying this knowledge to real-life projects you will get a much
> clearer idea of what the more im****tant things are that you've
> learned, and what else you need to learn.
>
> So in the same way that you have to get out of the parking lot and
> drive the streets with your supervisor before you'll be able to pass
> your driving test, and in the same way that after years and years of
> schooling, doctors have to be an intern for another year before
> they're allow to practice medicine by themselves; you have to embark
> on real drawing projects to properly learn to apply the things you've
> learned about drawing.
>
> Real-life achievement is the final and ultimate test for anything you
> want to be good at doing, but to do well on that test you need to
> focus on all of the kinds of education mentioned: You need to develop
> theoretical knowledge, practical skill and entrenched good habits.
> Furthermore you need to focus on making the pursuit fit in with the
> rest of your life, which requires another set of knowledge, skills and
> habits.
>
> It might seem like this is a lot to attend to, but neglecting any one
> of these things will lead to frustration, setbacks and wasted time. If
> your performance at something is failing due to lack of skill, and you
> try to fill the gap with more knowledge, then you will be wasting your
> time and get frustrated. Likewise if you're highly skilled but
> ignorant of many of the techniques and strategies that exist for doing
> what you want then you'll be held back. If you're very good at all
> aspects of a particular activity except that it frequently comes into
> conflict with other things in your life, then you won't get the
> enjoyment and results that you would otherwise be able to get.
>
> In short, learning to be good at something requires several kinds of
> learning. If you cover them all then you can improve a lot and enjoy
> doing so. If you neglect any of them then you will expend too much
> effort for too little reward.
>
Very nicely written, darwinist. Sometime, would you expand on that idea
of
entrenching good habits?
|
