Making great art, like so many other things in life, is not something that people are born knowing how to do. However, I can tell you that there is one very important thing that you can do to achieve your goal of becoming a great artist, or a great cook or becoming great at anything. That is to do it.

Have a goal? Just do it!

To be more specific, do it a lot. I don’t mean sitting down one day and trying really hard to make the perfect picture. This is something that you may succeed or fail at, but it really will not help you to improve your skills unless you repeat the process, regularly.

Perhaps I am biased, but I have found that the way that I learn best is to try my best and more than likely fail. But don’t just stop there. Fail again and again and again. You might think that this sounds like crazy advice, but I believe that it is the secret to achieving any worthy goal.

When I was younger, I had a very reckless and lazy attitude. I thought that if I wanted to do something, like really do something worthwhile. I would simply devise a plan of attack, implement it as well as I could and then live with the results. If I did reasonably well, then I succeeded. If I failed then I probably wasn’t any good at it anyway, I mean who would want to be, it is stupid anyway. Everything was a one shot deal, all or nothing and failure was a bad thing. It meant that I was not good enough to do whatever it was.

The error of my ways

Well, as it turns out, I was wrong about a few things. The first thing I was wrong about was that just because I didn’t succeed on my first attempt didn’t mean that I just wasn’t able to do it. In fact, if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t good at anything to start with. I just had this idea that there were some things that some people were good at and other things that other people are good at. I suppose that is true to a point, but in the end what it came down to is that if I wanted to be able to do something well, I needed to practice doing it.

The next thing that I believed was that just because I failed at something meant that it wasn’t worth doing. This was a pretty hollow lie to begin with, but I think that everyone tells themselves this to some extent. It can be in a moment of pouting after a bitter defeat, seeping forth as, “That is stupid anyway!” It can also be something more subtle like giving up on something because I felt it was unattainable. The truth of the matter is that if there is a goal that I decide is worth attaining, then I should do it.

The last item I was wrong about (well I am sure there were many others but let’s stick to the context) was that I should only make one attempt at doing something. Putting all my eggs in one basket so to speak. This is now something I try to avoid as it is a recipe for for failure, and not the good kind.

What is the good kind of failure?

A good failure is one that has a low risk associated with it and is both small and repeatable. I used to do things like waiting until the night before a project was due to even start on it. My thinking was that I would be able to complete it even if I lost some sleep so why worry about it sooner. As it turns out this wasn’t the best way to go about it. Go figure.

What makes sense to me now is to take a large project and break it down into a number of smaller steps. Provide plenty of time for each of these steps to be completed and then start with the first one. This way, I give myself permission to fail and give myself a chance to learn from my mistakes and try again (and again and again, if necessary). I figured out that I am best at learning when I can see where I went wrong. People say something about hindsight being 20/20, so why not utilize that ability to see what went wrong to improve future performance?

The perfect learning opportunity

If you can make your failures into an asset, then honestly what can stop you? Your success? The trick is making the risk associated with failing minimal then there really is no downside. Fail as much as possible while achieving your goal to maximize your learning potential!

How to apply this to art

This process has applications throughout our lives. It may not be a solution for rocket scientists or doctors but it works pretty well for the most of our goals. Becoming a better artist is a goal that is works perfectly for. Maximize your learning potential by failing as much as possible. In other words, draw often. Every day is best, make it a habit and stick to it for at least a month or so to be able to really see the improvement.

I find a great way to do this is to challenge myself is with a daily drawing challenge like with Index Cards or my latest Nertiah world building.

What do you want to be better at? Art? Something else? Are you willing to fail?