The Best (Art) Advice I’ve Gotten from the Internet…
(Edit in April 2024: Right up front, this is just my journey, and what worked for me in getting to painting and creating regularly. This is not to say you should also do the same if it is not working for you, but if you’re wanting to create a practice and are not sure where to begin, perhaps what helped me will help you. But it is just one of many paths to the same goal.)
I’ve written this post a couple of times but stopped short of publishing each time. In light of the Alphabet Superset challenge created by Campbell Walker (Struthless), I decided to take part in, now’s as good a time as any to revisit and actually publish this. If you’re interested in knowing more about the challenge, click the link above to go to the challenge’s page or click here for my blog post on why I’m doing it.
In a nutshell:
The best art advice I’ve gotten from the internet is also from Campbell Walker aka Struthless and it was actually the first video of his I'd ever watched.
The video is actually about the best advice he’d gotten.
The advice: draw/paint/write/(insert creative activity here) the same thing every day. Pick a subject, and a medium and then just do the same thing every day for a year.
It is really best to hear it from the horse’s mouth so to speak, so watch the video above and if you’re interested in how it helped me, I’ve got that story in the rest of the post
Back Story
For some reason in around January 2020, Youtuber and artist Struthless’ video about the best drawing advice he’d been given came up on my feed while I was still on a volunteer assignment Indonesia.
At the time, I wasn’t really drawing very much or really at all. I wasn’t thinking about drawing or looking up art or drawing advice. I wasn’t even writing or doing anything else like that although I was thinking about writing. I was on a volunteer assignment with a small NGO in Samarinda in East Kalimantan, really excited about being in Borneo and living and working there.
Eyeshadow sketch that I’d given to my team leader at work in 2017.
Painting, sketching, drawing were things I’d occasionally do - very occasionally. I remembered sketching a simple scene and crane and while we were in Vanua Balavu in Fiji’s Lau group of Islands in Dec 2019. I remember painting a short while after I’d moved to Samoa in late 2018 and early 2019 for things I would put up in my room. I remember painting/using my eyeshadows and eyeliners to create some artworks in around July/August 2017.
Random doodle from random notebook that I thought to photograph.
That was it. Apart from doodling flowers and vines in my notebooks which I’d pretty much always done.
I didn’t know how much I’d be thinking about this video again over the coming months and that I’d come back to it in April 2020.
I was back home in Australia by then, and having done all the tidying up I could be bothered with after a couple of weeks back home, I really wanted a project to sink into.
What is the video about?
While I’ll summarise it and what I got out of it here, I highly recommend watching the video itself (embedded at the start above).
Simply it is about practice and consistency. In it, Struthless talks about the advice he’d been given when he was feeling particularly scattered in his creativity and creative practice(s).
He was told by his mentor / person he was working for at the time Marc Schattner, to draw the same thing every day. Marc Schattner picked the medium for him - drawing, he just had to choose one thing - only one thing that he would draw every day for a year. He picked the Ibis (or bin chicken as it is often known in Australia).
What he learned was that drawing the same thing every day wasn’t actually about improving that specific drawing or skill, but about getting started, and getting into a habit. In the process of drawing the Ibis every day, he got bored and started drawing it in different places, with funny commentary, jokes and he slowly found what he actually wanted to draw and say. His drawing and what he did evolved because he was putting in the time to draw the same thing every day.
How has this helped me
When I first watched the video, I’d been thinking of writing and making a habit of writing more - so I thought I’d apply it to that but when COVID hit, and we were sent back to Australia, after a few weeks of cleaning and tidying, I found myself drawn to my art supplies.
One of my earliest doodles when I got home and started drawing/painting again
I picked up some paint and brushes and started to doodle and paint. After a few days, I decided this was what I wanted to focus my energy on at the moment and so I had to pick a medium and a subject. I didn’t go quite as dramatic as Struthless did. I went with alcohol markers first because I’d seen some lovely vibrant art made with them and told myself I’d focus on drawing and painting flowers.
Every day I would draw a flower or at least one plant. That had already narrowed everything down so much for me. And so I did. I focused on flowers and then I liked what I was doing so much and the joy that art brought to me and the zone that I got into every time that I started looking at how I could take this with me on my travels. I tried digital art with a wacom tablet for a little while but it wasn’t really my thing at the time.
Some of the things I was drawing/painting/colouring in April/May 2020.
I then came across a video on Youtube by Youtuber @travellingsweetpea and @svvajewels with travel watercolour kits, and I realised how portable watercolour could be. These two videos started me down a rabbit hole of looking at how various artists set up their travel watercolour kits and committed to trying it.
It was a real game-changer and I found and loved (or made myself at least learn to work with) a medium that’s so great for travel.
I can’t remember where I learnt about the cut sock tip for wiping excess water out in the field, but I soon set up a simple watercolour kit that I started taking outdoors with me.
On the other side of things, the focus on just one subject meant that I went from floral doodles to wanting to draw and paint actual flowers more realistically you can see some of these early ones above. From there, I found nature journalling and the wonderful world of sketching nature both indoors and outdoors with watercolour and also started dabbling in gouache.
From about June 2020 I was getting into nature journaling more.
It made me excited to learn about these plants - what were they? Are they endangered or common? Native or introduced? From my local library, I borrowed many books on watercolour, on identifying the plants of Perth and the Southwest, of floral artworks and botanical art of WA wildlflowers. It got me looking so much more closely and with so much more joy and wonder at the beautiful natural world around me.
That led me to trying to paint birds, then crabs and lizards. Then I tried my hand at quick plein air sketches and dabbled in landscape elements. I started enjoying painting full paintings not just sketching. It got me back to the hours and hours I could spend as a child making leaf impressions, drawing decorative flowers, copying and trying to paint animals from the covers of books I was reading or from huge coffee-table Disney character books.
Tried painting my first birds in August 2020, then we went to Christmas Island and I painted tons and started exploring reptiles and crustaceans. I always had a long list of things I wanted to paint by this point.
I’d always been fascinated by plants and animals, and I’d always loved drawing (even if I’d not always been very good at it), but somewhere along the line, I’d moved on to putting my energies into other interests and forgotten these almost entirely.
From around Sept 2020 I also started simple landscape elements and was painting lots more trees.
Just deciding to and then drawing a flower every day has led me down a path of learning and appreciating nature and the places I’m in so much more.
It reminded me of an activity that 99.9% of the time brings me into a state of flow, fun and enjoyment.
Where am I now with this journey?
Well, here in September 2023, three and a half years after I’d picked up my brushes again and decided on a creative practice, I’m still painting, drawing or creating in some way. Almost every day. It doesn’t always happen every day, especially if it is a busy time with work or if I’m traveling, but I always miss it when I don’t - it feels like something is missing from the day. And so, I always come back to it. Whether it is a week or a fortnight later, I always come back to it.
In terms of mediums, I’ve now tried a few (portable) ones, and I’m currently loving gouache as my primary medium, although I do still love to play with ink and watercolour. I’m also hoping to try to get my digital skills a bit better so I can edit some of my work after its been painted/drawn. (Edit April 2024: I’ve now added Procreate on the iPad to my list of mediums)
In 2021 and 2022, I started really focusing a lot more on gouache, and that has continued, though I still carry pen and ink supplies and often a small watercolour palette.
When in comes to subject matter, I still paint nature, and it is so lovely to look back at my work to see the progress it has made. I’m also exploring different ways to use gouache. For instance, I’m exploring ways gouache was used in Islamic and Indian miniature paintings, and slowly my various loves of art and nature, painting, travel and traditional crafts are coming together.
I am looking forward to the next six months of painting Australian animals I’ve seen as part of my Alphabet Superset project, and I’m looking forward to continue to explore whichever other directions the journey organically takes me on, including exploring a wider range of subject matter. (Edit April 2024: It is going to take me a lot longer than 6 months to finish this project, but I’m still really enjoying it and it has also led me in an unexpected direction: digital painting in Procreate).
I don’t know where it will go yet, and I’m enjoying the journey.
If you’re wanting to start something, and are unsure where to begin, I’d suggest doing exactly the same. Pick the tools/medium and pick a subject then commit to doing it every day. (Edit April 2024: At least to start with try every day, and if not every day, then regularly. It is a practice and the consistency is what gets you there. Of course, take breaks when you need to, but come back to it. You can let yourself evolve as the challenge goes on like I did, or stick rigidly to the medium and subject but just start.)