Do you want specific strategies to improve your skill as artist? Look no further. Hi, my name is Carrie, and today on Artist Strong we’re going to review the book called Peak, written by Anders Ericsson. It’s all about expertise, and talks about specific strategies we can use to help improve our skills in any discipline. Let’s get started.
Anders Ericsson studied experts for 30 years, and what he discovered is that there’s no such thing as talent. There is, however, a specific way to build your skill.
People seem to think that we have this fixed potential, and we can all only work up to a certain level of ability. In fact, his research shows across all kinds of disciplines that this is entirely false. The thing that every expert has in common is that they have a specific formula they use to build their skill.
I have a quote for you today from the book: “The right sort of practice, carried out over a sufficient period of time, leads to improvement.” What is this right kind of practice? He calls it purposeful practice, or deliberate practice, and there’s a bunch of qualities that this kind of practice possesses. Let’s break that down.
The first piece of the practice puzzle is that you need to have very specific goals.
What kind of skill do you want to achieve? What level of skill do you want to achieve? What kind of techniques do you want to learn?
You should know what you’re aiming for so that you can then, which is the second ingredient, build baby steps to help you get there.
Once you have those baby steps you can make focused effort on each smaller step, which will lead you to your larger goal.
All this needs to also have another element, which is the fourth piece, and that is feedback.
You have to have feedback from someone who can see your mistakes, or see your strengths and weaknesses, and help you then create strategies to build on those weaknesses to grow your skill. Feedback is an absolutely necessary part of your practice if you want to build your skill.
The last piece of this puzzle is you not only have to practice to build your skill, you have to go outside of your comfort zone.
All of these ingredients together are why so few people are experts in their discipline. No one wants to do the focused practice that means boring repetitive practice to get better at a skill that they are developing.
No one likes being outside their comfort zone. It’s uncomfortable. You don’t want to be there, you want to be somewhere that feels comfortable. Yet the more you can keep yourself outside of that comfort zone, the more you’re going to see growth in your skill.
The only reason you stop getting better at your art is because you stopped trying to improve. That’s the big message and take away from today’s book, Peak. The only way that experts get better and become expert at their discipline is through this focused practice.
Tied to this feedback part of the puzzle, you also need someone who knows techniques that you don’t know. Our techniques can limit us unless we have a teacher, someone who is ahead of us, and this could be a one on one teacher, this could be an online environment, this could be free videos that you find online, or even from books. You find the resources that have this information but you need to learn new techniques that help inform your practice to build your skill. A teacher is a part of that puzzle.
Another piece of this expert puzzle I found quite, well, surprising to be honest, when I read this book was that in addition to this focused deliberate practice that experts use to build their skill, and maintain it, and continue to grow it, they also have really strong library of mental representations in their head. What do I mean by this?
It’s this idea that they have, they can picture then working with a specific technique really easily, and it comes to them comfortably. A lot of athletes, for example, will imagine themselves playing a really good game right before the game that they go start working, they start participating in, or competing in.
That visual representation helps them be better during the actual game. By having those mental representations in their mind, they can anticipate problems before they come, and even know how to adjust their choices and technical choices that they’re making to accommodate the problem before it even happens.
Ask yourself what kind of mental representations you have of the artist techniques that you want to be achieving. Can you picture yourself drawing photo realistically? What would that look like? How do you hold your pencil or pen? How do you angle yourself? What kind of environment are you in? How do you measure things to help you get the information down onto your paper? All of these mental representations will help inform and build your art skill.
The last piece of today’s puzzle that I’d like to bring up for you is that you have to have solitary practice.
That’s another ingredient that all of these experts that Ericsson research share is that they made time for solitary practice.
Now I want to be clear here, part of his goal with this book was not to tell everyone how to become an expert, not everyone has the time, nor is willing to put in the time needed, to become an expert. Expert violinists have to practice for at least five to eight hours a day. Well not everyone has time for that kind of practice.
However, you can still build your skill and that’s part of the point of his book is that if you’re willing to put in even a little bit of focused effort every day; maybe just the 15 minutes that I often encourage people in our community to make time for in terms of art making.
If you could put in 15 minutes of focused skill building activity a day, you’re going to improve your skill, and that’s the point of today’s book review. You don’t have to become an expert if you don’t want to, but you can reach to improve your skill, and if that’s something you really want, then these are the steps you take to get there.
Be Creatively Courageous: Today in the comments below, I’d like you to tell me about one technique or skill that you wish to develop, and grow, and be better at, in the arts. Then outline three smaller steps you can take to build and improve that skill. I look forward to seeing what you have to say, I’ll give you any support I can in the comments below. Let’s get that conversation started.
Today’s book review, the book, Peak, actually inspired me to develop an entirely new program. It’s called Better Drawing Bootcamp (and NOW called Self-Taught to Self-Confident). I’m using the research from the lessons I’ve learned in today’s video and from the book, to develop a research based program that helps us build our drawing skills.
If this sounds like fun to you, or you know that you want to build your drawing skills and you’re not quite sure the formula to get there, you don’t want to have to build it yourself, then consider joining me and learning more about my program, Better Drawing Bootcamp. I have a 7 day training series that’s free, that will get you started on drawing, and give you more information about the program. All you have to do is sign up below. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next week.
There is a formula to improve your drawing skills...but are you using it?
Join Drawing Drills: a FREE 7 day art challenge
uncover the research based strategies that experts in every field use to improve their skill.
Draw better, draw faster, draw from your imagination!
Enjoy this free bonus when you sign up for Artist Strong's weekly newsletter.
We honor your privacy - read more here.
I’d like to be a full on master at drawing backgrounds and interiors of every kind based on watercolor.
I guess three things I could do is practice perspective, draw different backgrounds and challenege myself to combine different baclgrounds to boost creativity (?)
Patricia your goal is great – it is specific and actionable, which let’s you create practice steps that you can break down to dig into that deliberate practice. What are some strategies or tasks you could list to practice perspective? Be as specific as possible (but also don’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to do, make it worthwhile and fun). All three things you’ve suggested are different areas of practice you could work on.
For me, right now, it’s all the negative space. It is related to contour drawing, I think, and yet is a thing unto itself. I can see the negative and positive spaces in the world, everywhere, but when I go to draw them they seem twisted or broken or unrecognizable. I used a picture plane to draw my hand and it came out amazing, but I can’t hold the plane steady to even get a basic unit for anything else. I have no idea where to go or what three things I can do. Youtube videos? It’s hard because I don’t yet know the progression of skill development. I have a Master’s in Education and understand how this works, but I can’t find a specific path to skill development. You seem to have one.
The book Peak by Anders Ericsson was mind blowing for me, and I also hold a masters in education. Read it. I wish I had known this a a teacher and an administrator – I would have made it required summer reading for my teachers. He has done the research to show how to develop skill and I’ve been creating lesson content ever since based on his research. The results have been impressive for my students too! I sent you an email with some links for negative space that I hope help. Thanks for sharing Jan!
Hello Carrie, One skill I want to develop is brush strokes. I think my watercolour mark making would benefit from being more fluent in knowing about this. As well, my other project were I mix photo and watercolour.
Studying mark making with watercolors is a great specific goal and area of study. And knowing how it would inform your work with photography and watercolor is even more motivation to follow through and go for it!
Hi Carrie, I’m self-taught and although I’ve been painting with watercolour for about 4 years, my colour mixing and dilution is still inconsistent. So first I could practice diluting slowly with one brush dip in water at a time so I get a clearer idea of how much water produces what consistency; single cream or double cream. I have produced colour mixing charts as part of my early study but maybe practising mixing the specific colours I’m going to use in the palette and making a quick chart, right before I paint the subject would help. Next I could do the same exercise at the bottom of the paper, to get a feel for how the paint mixes on the surface.
I like the specific actions you are talking about. They are great strategies to help you uplevel your watercolour work. Don’t overwhelm yourself either – we want to keep things fun too – so if one strategy is worth trying for a while test one out and see if you think it does help. It’s all one big experiment!
Ha! You’ve given me an idea for a blog post.
I’m a musician, so I understand about focused, private practice. I have made it my goal and choreographed it into my schedule to paint everyday (as well as play and sing everyday!) because I know what it takes.
But I like to paint paintings, not practice skills… Just as I enjoy mastering songs and pieces rather than practicing scales and warm ups.
I have discovered that I can use the difficult parts of my songs and pieces to create exercises for myself. But I haven’t yet discovered how to do that for painting–haven’t even really considered doing so.
Perhaps the three things I can do are:
Choose something from each painting that I felt was difficult.
Practice that difficult thing, either in isolation or in another painting
Ask for specific feedback on my progress.
I think your three things sound excellent! We can find ways to practice that work for us.
I want to improve on creating more realistic art with perspective and light. I’m a painter, but want to acquire the foundational skills in drawing to improve upon my paintings and grow my skill set.
I tend to rush, so I know I need to slow down my process. I also should focus on proportions when I’m drawing, and take more time to study my reference photo so I can be sure to plan it out so light and proportions aren’t compromised.
Lindsey you’ve been really specific here about things you can focus on to improve your work. That is GREAT. Specific means easy to take action on, which means it’s that much easier to show up, do the work, and see that improvement you seek. :O)
very interesting and motivational introduction. I find the date to enrol has lapsed. is it still continued by now?
The free challenge drawing drills is open year round. You can sign up here: https://artiststrong.teachable.com/p/drawing-drillshttps://artiststrong.teachable.com/p/drawing-drills
Hello :33 I’m a newbie that practice 4 ab 3 years ig, and i really wanna know how to draw anatomy but i don’t have an actual list to improve it, but i want to draw some hard poses and make the muscles look nicer. I’m also bad at doing bg although i’ve learnt ab the perspective, vanishing point and some related about it. But i dont feel like it’s became better i really wan to know how
I want to improve my skills to do commission, Hope you’ll give me some tips =33
I have an entire section of the blog all about BUilding Skill that should offer a lot of help! Also, I have a free class called Drawing Drills you can join for free here: https://artiststrong.teachable.com/p/drawing-drills
I want to master drawing people and portraits in different angles from life. I want to learn the technique to be able to draw in correct proportion when I see people from daily life and capture emotions and feelings in my drawing.
For this I need to learn prospective drawing ,anatomy of human it’s features drawing head from different angles, drawing various expressions and facial features of face and body.
Great Pratima! Now how can you translate those needs into action? 5 minute drawings from observation every day (for example)? You can do it! go go go.