“In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all at least know some bits and pieces about the fundamentals of art and how to practice them. There is some informational overlap, yet, I doubt that there’s a person on here who doesn’t know at least one thing that I don’t know about art. And, plenty of you know far more than I do. There is one thing I know, however: deliberate practice on the specific things will lead to improvement. Deliberate practice is difficult to boil down. However, the more practice that any one of us does, the more that we have to teach others. Beyond that, we all have fresh eyes. We all can see when a work is missing something. Being open to critical evaluation and being able to give a good critical evaluation are both skills in and of themselves.
Benjamin Franklin created a “club of mutual self-improvement” called Junto. By working with a group of people in mutually improving themselves, he actually created a strong source of political and financial power that was simultaneously a force for good. I’m essentially applying that concept to a collaborative art development program, if some number of you all would be interested in working together on it. This is a very low-commitment activity. However, the fact that we work together is a motivating force. Collaboration is fun.
I want to achieve a professional or near professional ability in art before I am 30 years old. I am 22 right now. That leaves less than eight years.
So, here’s what I will do, with an extended invitation to anyone else at any level to give their input:
-Lay out the core fundamentals (needed for any 2D realistic art) and subjects of study (i.e. anatomy, hard surface, plants).
-Create a list of resources on these fundamentals and subject materials.
-Create a progressive catalogue of exercises that allow someone to take any path that they want in a specific artistic
pursuit, starting from the fundamentals. That is, this catalogue
starts from the basics, and as you move on, you create a tangible
sense of progress. This somewhat gamifies the study of art,
essentially.
-Create a system in which we judge whether someone is ready to move onto the next portion of the catalogue (though it’ll all be open and
available).
I am going to start with realism, since you go from realism to simplicity if you’re studying something like cartoons, and not the other way around. If you’re not looking to make art based on reality, then this program simply isn’t for that, though I definitely intend to gain some visual aid.
I am reaching out to other art forum communities to make this effort come together, and fill in the resources and exercises sections. Just leave comments on here or in the text.
I’ve made it so that anyone can comment. Feel free to point out exactly where you’d put things in. I’ll just be editor in chief for now, but it’s wholly a collaborative effort (and I trust a lot of people to have good information by seeing their work).