#40 - The Benefits For Artists Of Working LESS efficiently!
Or rather, slow down!Warm-Up Drawing Exercises
Quickly become better at drawing—without burning out—by using my workbook.
This newsletter is hand-written, and I could have typed it. This is more satisfying, and it changes my output considerably.
Instead of frantically typing to hit a certain output, I enjoy every second meditatively. How often do you sit somewhere where you have to wait and whip out your mobile and go onto a social media platform? This is seriously destroying your creative output for several reasons!
Reason 1: the stuff you can see and read online isn’t very good. On some platforms, like Twitter, the posts that invoke the most emotion come to the forefront, and it’s all just discourse between people who don’t know enough. You’re better off reading a book. Or, if you are looking for art, why not look for the masters? Again, in books?
Reason 2: Our output is formed by our input for us artists, and our art is a response to something. Always. And so it becomes vital to curate our input, to choose what we respond to.
Reason 3: you need to give your brain time to be bored, not do anything, just look around you and think and experience life.
Put away your mobile, and just slow down and look around. Discover what YOU think of the world. And let that show in your art. Because that is an important thing that makes your art interesting: what is that unique thing YOU have to say about what you see around you?
Don’t respond to other peoples’ opinions; it is just a second-hand opinion. That’s one reason I often find editorial cartoons less interesting: the cartoonist reads today’s news and comes up with a cartoon—his response to his input.
But it is his response to an opinion by a journalist. It’s not based on personal observation. Sempé is an example of a cartoonist who didn’t read the newspapers but instead made his cartoons about the little ironies of life he saw around him. Why “protect” children with umbrellas? They LOVE jumping into poodles! And it’s just water!
Social media is fast food for the brain. And you distract your creative brain with it and fill your brain with it. There are many books out there that are tremendously more worthy of your time.
Or just slow down, walk around or sit somewhere, and just take in life!
Warmly,
Ayal