Can you relate to this thought? "I want to become a better painter.... fast"?

yep.. 'fast'.. we live in an instant world and it has taught us to want things 'now'.

Like many women artists, I started the serious art stuff when I quit my day job and retired . So upskilling was number one.

How do you even start?

Enter the focused daily painting practice...aka the 'daily study' or 'almost daily study - life gets in the way sometimes.

I figured the only way to improve my work was to study..daily, a bit like a musician studies scales and does finger exercises. No one hears the scales and finger exercises in a performance but without them the musician is weak. It's kind of funny how we expect that musicians practice for  hours on end but somehow or other we think that artists are 'just made', so many give up too soon.

So how on earth do you start the daily study?

1. Focus on one thing at a time!  It's a bit like if you aim at nothing you will hit it.  So every time we pick up a pencil or paintbrush we have a clear 'intention'

Example:

Intention - to focus on getting that initial 'block-in'. And you can do this on good oil  painting paper. 

Why is that initial stage so important? It is here where we can start to see if the initial light-dark pattern is going to work, if the size and placement of things on the canvas works (composition) etc. The more focused practice we do on this, the better (and faster) we will get.  

I can tell you now that if we don't get that initial block in going the right way, we will end up chasing our tail all through out the painting, and it will be frustrating to say the least. I have spent many hours in this predicament! Often it can happen at workshops too where you are racing to 'catch up' to be ready for the next stage. The next stage comes and you struggle because your initial block in needs more work. Well that is my experience anyway. 

So- lots of practice just doing initial block-ins- they don't have to be large and you don't have to show them to anyone.. they are YOUR study, like the musician's scales. But also like the musician's scales, once is definitely not enough. Try it for a couple of months or so and see the difference.