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50 minute speedpaint

Draw every day all day and then some more. Get a sketchbook, use it. Use it often.  Set up a space for the sole purpose of art. paint there, draw there, live there.

Study

Workshops, how-to videos, art books, galleries, clubs, magazines, life drawing classes, Art history books. anything with the word art in it really. The internet is chock full of information. USE IT!

Do the groundwork

Paint what you know and if you don’t research the subject, by either studies or references.

Get better equipment

Go ahead and splurge on that nice new tablet, or that nice set of paints. If you get a new corvette, you aren’t exactly going to leave it in the driveway!

Composition and Design

Use thumbnail sketches, lay out values, use the rule of thirds (if you divide the painting in 3, each third is interesting enough to look at.) Use perspective in any sort of “realistic” paintings. Use the entire page, nothing is worse than looking at a floating head if you painted a portrait.

Teach Somebody

Teach somebody else to draw or paint, or even sculpt. You will find yourself telling them to do certain things that you know you should do but don’t. By doing this, you might make an effort to follow your own advice.

Experience EVERYTHING

Don’t just look at art books and what others have done. Watch the northern lights yourself, go to a zoo, see earth and all it has to offer and THEN throw it on a canvas for all to see.

A clean room is a clean mind

Make your space comfortable and clean and easy to work in and you will find it a lot easier to be motivated into doing something.

Be different

Try something different. You are a landscape painter? Well too bad, now you paint space ships and dinosaurs, or dinosaurs in space ships. Do whatever it takes to get yourself out of the rut you are in. Sticking to the same style can often lead to unchanged progress.

Improve your technique

Limit your strokes, start BIG and end in detail. Use dynamic lighting and keep things interesting.

PRACTICE!

Just like anything else in the world, the more you do it, the better you will be at it.

I know this was listed twice and makes the list 11, but it really is the most important part of becoming a better artist. Learn something new in a study and then try it out in your own work, then go back and do a study of how ducks are drawn, then go and make a landscape painting with ducks by a pond.

Art is what you make of it.

From McSweeney’s.

From Coudal.

Cute. The Print After Party, by Jason Eppink and Posterchild.

Can’t help but wonder where I can get my hands on one.