A friendly reminder (also to myself): “No Progress without Action!“
While I’m making my new online class about travel sketching in Portugal I am thinking about how to make people engage better and post drawings in the classes. I get a lot of reviews from people who never post drawings in the classes. I’m grateful for the reviews of course but puzzled about why they don’t post their art?
Simply watching videos won’t lead to progress. Please take the time to engage actively with the classes—don’t just watch the videos. This advice isn’t just for my classes, but for all classes on Skillshare and other platforms of course. It’s like learning to write: to learn to write, you have to try to write regularly. To learn a new language, you have to try to speak regularly…. Same with music…. Make music, not only listen to music, if you want to learn how to play music.
Enjoy the process, play, experiment, and embrace the “good enough” mindset. By doing so, you’ll make spectacular progress in your drawing skills.
I recently read a blog post by Wendy Mac that made me reflect on why people often hesitate to share their drawings or merely watch videos without actually try to make the drawing themselves. This often leads to frustration. We’re so hard on ourselves, aren’t we?
Perfectionism often manifests when we attempt to create art, whether it’s drawing, sketching, or painting. It’s a trap that can stop us in our tracks. The sketchbook should be a laboratory where we confront these issues, play with them, and discover ways to let go of our inner critic and perfectionism.
How does perfectionism stop us from drawing? How can we keep on going drawing and painting and enjoy it better? How can we start again after a long period of no drawing? The Perfectionist in you wants you to make a master piece each time!
What is a “good enough” drawing? As Wendy writes in her blogpost : I believe a good enough drawing is all about the experience of creating it, not about meeting certain expectations. Making a drawing involves unexpected moves, mistakes, and surprise gifts, which all contribute to the final image on the page. Sometimes, maybe even often, we find our drawing “ugly”… But also often, it turns out better than we expected.
As artists, everything we’ve done—every breath, every decision, and every person we’ve loved—brings us to this moment and to this drawing. It might not be perfect, but we tried, had fun, relaxed, and collected memories from the day. I want to believe that we are good enough.
So let’s go for “good enough” drawings and paintings, and show them to the world, because I’m sure they will brighten up someone else’s day and will encourage also others to spread beauty.
Can’t draw a straight line? Me neither! I learned to love my wiggly lines. There’s room for all kinds of lines in the Art World. Also for wiggly lines.
Have you seen my latest experimenting video on You Tube I made in Portugal?
I hope you like it. Please subscribe to my channel to see more video’s if you like to see free tutorials.
Tell me in the comments below : do you regularly show your drawings and find them “good enough”?
Hello Barbara, I’ve been showing my work on Instagram since I started watercolor painting, 3 years ago. It’s a gift to myself to document day by day my inspiration and a way to put art in the center of my everyday life, even if I’m not a professional artist. I can see the evolution of my painting from my very first sketch in the summer 2021, the ideas that came through different experimentations and the many ways a simple sheet of paper may transform an idea into an image.
I follow your work on Instagram mostly (and through your books too) and I can see that you have, as an artist, so many ways to express the beauty of the world. I’m very happy when watching your videos on YT or Skillshare, and sorry if I don’t post much on Skillshare after the lessons, but be sure that those lessons open many doors of creativity in my own work.
I started with tea-cups, now I paint landscapes with aerial perspective, and for sure, some of your lessons helped me a lot to improve. Thank you for that and please, continue to ‘enchant our world’…
♥️♥️♥️ thank you so much ☺️
Barbara, thank you for sharing this video of your journal sketching; it’s always so fun to watch you create your magic!
I am one of those artists that do not contribute pics of my sketchbook pages after each of your classes ( which I enjoy immensely), but I DO all of the exercises and projects. I don’t skip them. I agree with what Wendy said, ‘ a good enough drawing is all about the experience of creating it.’ And that experience doesn’t always feel like something I want to share. For me, it isn’t about holding back because of perfectionism or judgment about my skills – I love all of my many journals and treasure them highly.
Another aspect that comes into not posting sometimes is that the class is an older one and there doesn’t seem to be any current interaction in it. Ha! I suppose there might be if I ventured to post . I admit I enjoy looking at the images posted by previous students.
So, okay, I’ll go back and add some images from my shetchbooks to the glasses I’ve taken – which include nearly every one of yours; I’m looking forward to the next one from your trip to Portugal. I hope to learn even more from you and apply it to my vacation in France this fall.
Thank you for your classes!
♥️♥️♥️
Don’t worry if the classes are already there since some time. There’s still activity in them as well !
I agree with Shahar about the age of the class. Very often I’m late to the game, and I see that classes were ‘hot’ about 2 years ago. For this reason I don’t post my art because it would feel like I’m posting into the void.
Don’t worry about that Julie
You’re not posting into a void, because people who follow you, and the teachers, get a message about you posting your art, and will always go have a look and love your work