Skill Pillars - what you need to get good at art

Summary

In this video, the creator outlines a 10,000-hour journey to enhance foundational art skills, or 'skill pillars,' essential for all artists. These include composition, value, color, form and perspective, and technical ability with tools. The focus is on mastering broad, versatile skills for efficient learning, drawing parallels to the Pareto Principle for maximum impact. The creator also emphasizes the interrelation of these skills and the importance of understanding them for artistic development.

Takeaways

• 🎨 **Skill Pillars**: The video discusses the concept of 'skill pillars', which are fundamental skills necessary for drawing and painting.
• 📚 **Simplification**: The creator advocates for simplifying the learning process by focusing on a few key areas to study.
• 🔗 **Grouping**: It's suggested to group related skills together to make learning more efficient and interconnected.
• 🚀 **Efficiency**: The approach emphasizes finding skills that offer the best return on investment in terms of effort and time.
• 🏋️‍♂️ **Broad Skills**: The video stresses the importance of mastering broad skills that apply to all artists, regardless of their specific field.
• 🌟 **Composition**: The first skill pillar is composition, which includes techniques like the rule of thirds and using light and shadow to guide the eye.
• 🌑 **Value**: Value is the second pillar and is crucial for creating realistic and solid forms in art, as it's how we perceive the world visually.
• 🌈 **Colour**: Colour is the third pillar and involves understanding not just colours themselves but also colour harmonies and their psychological effects.
• 📏 **Form & Perspective**: The fourth pillar focuses on creating believable 3D forms and understanding anatomy, which is essential for depth and realism.
• 🛠️ **Technical Ability with Tools**: The final pillar is about mastering the tools of the trade, whether it's traditional media or digital tools.
• 📈 **Pareto Principle**: The video references the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) to suggest focusing on the core 20% of skills that lead to 80% of proficiency.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the video?

The main focus of the video is to discuss the fundamental skills, or 'skill pillars', required for drawing and painting, with the aim of enhancing these skills over a 10,000-hour time frame.

What are the three concepts the speaker wants the audience to consider before watching the video?

The three concepts are Simplification, Grouping, and Efficiency. Simplification refers to studying as few things as possible, Grouping is about combining these few things into related items, and Efficiency is about finding the best return for the least effort.

Why does the speaker emphasize the importance of understanding value in art?

Understanding value is crucial because it's how we perceive the world and how our brain interprets visual information. It allows artists to create realistic and solid representations in space.

What is the significance of the Pareto Principle in the context of this video?

The Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, is mentioned to emphasize focusing on the core 20% of skills that will lead to 80% of the desired outcomes in drawing and painting, aiming for efficient learning.

What are the five skill pillars identified in the video?

The five skill pillars are Composition, Value, Colour, Form & Perspective, and Technical Ability with Tools.

How does the speaker suggest approaching the skill of Colour?

The speaker suggests mastering values first before delving into colour, as understanding value is fundamental to appreciating colour. Colour includes colour harmonies, light, and cultural awareness.

What resources does the speaker recommend for studying Composition?

The speaker recommends 'Framed Ink' by Marcos Mateu-Mestre and landscape books by Mitchell Albala for studying Composition.

How does the speaker relate the skill of Form & Perspective to other skill pillars?

The speaker relates Form & Perspective to other skill pillars by stating that it overlaps with value and is always being worked on regardless of which pillar is being drilled.

What does the speaker suggest for mastering Technical Ability with Tools?

The speaker suggests freely experimenting and finding good combinations of paper and mark-making tools, as well as mastering the use of different art software.

Why is it important to establish a baseline in the speaker's 10,000-hour learning experiment?

Establishing a baseline is important to measure progress and validate the effectiveness of the learning method over the 10,000-hour period.

What does the speaker mean by 'drilling' in the context of learning these skill pillars?

‘Drilling’ refers to the focused and deliberate practice of each skill pillar to internalize and master the concepts discussed in the video.

Outlines

00:00

🎨 Developing Artistic Skills Efficiently

The speaker begins by expressing gratitude to subscribers and emphasizing the goal of enhancing foundational skills, or 'skill pillars,' for drawing and painting over a 10,000-hour period. The pillars are essential for all artists regardless of their specific field. Simplification, grouping, and efficiency are highlighted as key concepts for learning. The speaker clarifies that while there are skills unique to different art professions, the focus should be on broad, universally applicable skills. The Pareto Principle is introduced, suggesting that mastering a small percentage of core skills can lead to significant improvement. The speaker concludes by emphasizing the importance of starting with fundamental skills before moving on to more specific ones.

05:03

📚 The Five Pillars of Artistic Skills

The speaker outlines five key skill pillars: Composition, Value, Colour, Form & Perspective, and Technical Ability with Tools. Each pillar is essential for different aspects of art, such as creating appealing arrangements, understanding light and dark, capturing realistic color, achieving 3D effects, and mastering various art tools. The speaker provides examples of how these skills apply across different art forms and suggests resources for learning each pillar. The importance of focusing on one pillar at a time while still developing all of them is emphasized, akin to training different muscle groups simultaneously.

10:06

🛠️ Mastering Tools and Techniques

The final pillar discussed is Technical Ability with Tools, which encompasses the mastery of various art tools and materials. The speaker acknowledges that while some tools may be specific to certain artists, the ability to use any tool effectively is crucial. The speaker suggests that experimentation is the best way to improve with tools, and mentions a few resources for learning about specific tools like gouache. The speaker reiterates the importance of simplicity in understanding and practicing these skills, and hints at sharing a method for attacking these skill pillars in future videos. The session ends with a teaser for the next video, which will discuss setting goals and establishing a baseline for improvement.

Keywords

💡Skill Pillars

Skill Pillars refer to the fundamental skills required to excel in drawing and painting. The video emphasizes that these skills are the core competencies that all artists, regardless of their specific discipline, need to master. The concept is used to streamline the learning process by focusing on the essential skills that will have the most significant impact on an artist's development.

💡Simplification

Simplification is the concept of reducing complex subjects into fewer, more manageable elements for study. In the context of the video, it's about focusing on the most critical aspects of art to learn efficiently. The speaker uses this principle to distill the vast array of artistic skills into a smaller set of core skills, or 'skill pillars,' that form the basis of their 10,000-hour learning journey.

💡Grouping

Grouping is the process of organizing similar items or concepts into categories to simplify understanding and application. The video script uses grouping to consolidate various drawing and painting techniques under broader skill headings, making it easier to focus on learning and practicing interconnected skills that reinforce each other.

💡Efficiency

Efficiency in this video is about achieving the maximum result with the minimum effort. The speaker advocates for an approach to learning art that prioritizes skills that yield the highest payoff, aligning with the Pareto Principle. This principle is applied to identify the most impactful skills to master within the 10,000 hours of practice.

💡Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is mentioned as a guiding philosophy for the speaker's approach to learning art. It suggests that 80% of outcomes often result from 20% of efforts. In the video, this principle is applied to identify the most critical skills (the top 20%) that will contribute to the majority of an artist's proficiency.

💡Composition

Composition is one of the identified skill pillars and refers to the arrangement of visual elements in art. It encompasses techniques like the rule of thirds and the use of light and shadow to guide the viewer's eye. The video explains that understanding composition is essential for creating artwork that is aesthetically pleasing and effective in conveying a message or emotion.

💡Value

Value, in the context of the video, refers to the lightness or darkness of an object in a piece of art, which is critical for creating the illusion of depth and form. The script emphasizes that understanding value is essential for making artwork appear realistic, as it is how our brains interpret the world visually.

💡Colour

Colour is another skill pillar discussed in the video, involving not just the selection of hues but also understanding color harmonies and how color can influence human psychology. The script points out that mastering value is a prerequisite for effectively using color in art, as it helps artists manipulate how viewers emotionally respond to their work.

💡Form & Perspective

Form & Perspective is a skill pillar that involves the ability to create the illusion of three-dimensionality in two-dimensional space. The video script highlights the importance of this skill for making drawings and paintings appear realistic and believable, even without the use of value or color.

💡Technical Ability with Tools

Technical Ability with Tools refers to the proficiency in using various artistic tools and materials. The video script acknowledges that while this skill is broad and some aspects may not be relevant to every artist, mastering the tools of one's trade is crucial for achieving the desired effects in artwork.

Highlights

Introduction to the concept of 'skill pillars' essential for drawing and painting.

Emphasis on the importance of simplification in learning art skills.

Explanation of grouping as a method to simplify and efficiently learn art skills.

Discussion on the efficiency of learning, aiming for the best return with the least effort.

Comparison of art skills to athletic abilities, highlighting the transferability of certain skills.

The necessity of understanding color fundamentals regardless of the medium used.

Differentiating between skills needed for traditional art and design.

The concept of focusing on common skills required by all artists.

Introduction of the Pareto Principle in the context of learning art.

The idea of mastering a core 20% of skills for 80% of outcomes in art.

Identification of the five skill pillars: Composition, Value, Color, Form & Perspective, and Technical Ability with Tools.

Description of the Composition pillar, including the rule of thirds and emotional viewpoint.

Explanation of the Value pillar and its importance in creating realistic and solid forms in art.

Discussion on the Color pillar, including color harmonies and psychological effects.

Details on the Form & Perspective pillar, focusing on creating believable 3D representations.

Emphasis on the Technical Ability with Tools pillar, including mastery of various art tools and media.

The importance of interrelated skills and the benefits of training multiple skills simultaneously.

The author's approach to establishing a baseline for skill improvement.

Anticipation of sharing personal work examples and discussing goal setting in future content.

Transcripts

Time for another video And a quick shout and big  thank you out to those who have subscribed so far.  

It’s great to have you here following along, and  nice to see other people who are passionate about  

developing themselves efficiently to get better  at drawing and painting. If you’re new here,  

that’s what I am trying to do, across a 10,000  hour time frame, and today we are going to talk  

about the skills we need to enhance within  the 10k. I call these skills ‘pillars’.

So what are skill pillars? These are the  fundamental skills required to be good at  

drawing and painting. Note I say drawing and  painting, and not ‘to be an artist’ or to ‘be  

a designer, or illustrator’, as much like  in sport, there are certain skills in art  

that help out some professions much more than  others, and we aren’t so concerned with those.

Before you watch this video, I just want  to preload your minds with some concepts  

that should help you understand my  approach to drawing and painting

The first is SIMPLIFICATION, I want  as few things to study as possible.

The second is GROUPING, I want to  combine these few things we have  

to study into as small and compact a group of  related items as possible, making it even simpler.

The third is EFFICIENCY, meaning I want to  find which things will give us the best return,  

for the least effort. That ought to get us  to where we want to be as fast as possible.

As mentioned in my previous video,  

the high level mastery of throwing a baseball  hard and fast only applies to those who play  

baseball, but flexibility and hand eye  coordination are needed for every sport.

In the same sense, you don’t need to  understand the ins and outs of oil  

paint if you only ever want  to work with watercolours,  

but you will need to understand how colour  works, regardless of what you paint with.

That’s what I’m talking about here, the  BROADEST skills that ALL artists need,  

trimmed down to their simplest form.

The complexity of learning to draw and  paint is one of those annoying stumbling  

blocks that you might experience as  a beginner. There is a lot to learn,  

and the skills needed actually seem to depend on  what specific field of art you want to end up in.

For example, traditional artists like  Monet or Richard Schmidt can capture  

what is in front of them with an  astonishing degree of accuracy,  

yet add their own flair to it. This seems like  something we need to be able to do but WAIT!

If you want to be a ‘designer’, like Scott  Robertson or Syd Mead, then you can maybe  

actually ignore being able to accurately capture  the thing in front of you, because you will have  

to be able to draw things that do not even exist  yet! From your head! From your imagination. 

This is totally different to what those artists  were just doing… So which do we practise?

Whenever you find yourself in a situation  like this, you want to find the things that  

they ALL HAVE IN COMMON. What do they ALL  practice? That’s what you want to focus on.

Now clearly, there are people who are really good  at specific things, like those baseball players. 

You will need to be very good at just drawing  cars to become a car designer, but I’m going  

to ignore this fact FOR NOW, like ignoring the  baseball players, and focus on the much broader  

and useful skills, because the more specific  skills depend on the more general, simpler ones.

Those are the ones we want. Long  distance runners and sprinters,  

BOTH learned to walk very well first!

Grouping.

Remember, we are keeping things simple, we want  as few as possible, and we want to group them.

If we were trying to get  in shape, and build muscle,  

we don’t care about the difference between  push ups, shoulder presses and squats. We  

can just call that ‘pushing’ in general.  A simplified group of related tangible,  

practicable movements that we can perform  diligently, as we see ourselves get stronger.

The cool thing about grouping our simple  skills is that they become interrelated.  

That means when we train one, we actually  train others, much like muscle groups.

Sure, we pick one to emphasise, but in reality,  you’re training multiple skills up at once,  

and I believe this is absolutely key to developing  at the fastest, most efficient pace possible.

When I came up with this training method, I tried  to consider something called the Pareto Principle,  

or 80/20 rule. This is a principle coined  by Italian polymath Vilfredo Pareto,  

who noticed that 80% of peas he grew in his  garden came from just 20% of his pea plants,  

and this approximate ratio is seen all over the  place, both in nature, and in human activity.

For example, roughly 20% of words in a language  can be used to say 80% of sentences you use in  

everyday conversation. Master the most common  20% of Spanish words and grammar, and you will  

be able to say 80% of things you want to say in  Spanish. It's been applied to gourmet cooking,  

Brazilian jiu jitsu, even ballroom  dancing - and the results are pretty nuts.

Tim Ferriss uses the Pareto Principle in  learning new skills, where he states that  

you want to ‘figure out and get good at the  core 20% of stuff that will allow you to do  

80% of the activity’. We don't want to train  fluffy marginally related painty drawy things.  

We want the core, laser focused activities that  will lead to fast and direct improvement. If we  

learn the 20% of skill that makes us good at  drawing and painting, we should be able to  

draw and paint 80% of things we want, even  from our imaginations, with no reference!

We will get to that key 20% when  we return to the pareto principle  

another time to see how we can apply  it to our skill pillars, but for now,  

i've tried to bear that in mind and frame  the skill pillars within that context.

The simplest, most efficient  grouping - our skill pillars 

I’ve settled on the following 5 skill  pillars for the purposes of our studies.

Remember, when we work any drill,  we will work more than one pillar,  

sometimes all of them, but we will  usually pick ONE to emphasise.

Let’s start with the simplest:

Composition

It includes stuff like the rule of thirds, how  to convey emotion with our viewpoint, how to use  

light and shadow shapes to guide the eye across a  canvas, and where to place a character in a scene.

Every drawer or painter must know  at least a little about composition,  

because they will be working within a space,  be it a canvas, a screen, or a post-it note,  

and so they will have to understand how to  position the subject to make it appealing.

Storyboard artists use this pillar to convey a  specific emotion. A designer might choose to use  

a 30-60 perspective grid instead of an 80-10 one  to portray a sports car, because it provides the  

best viewpoint to understand the design from.  A landscape artist will see the vista before  

them as a collection of shapes and values, and  arrange those on the canvas in such a way as to  

guide the eye through it. So this is something  that clearly we all need to be proficient in.

I have a few resources I like that I will be using  for drilling this pillar, including Framed Ink by  

Marcos Mateu- Mestre. I also like the landscape  books by Mitchell Albala, which show how to think  

about capturing a scene in front of you, so I  will be using these as a curriculum of sorts.

Next up, Value It allows us to make things  

seem realistic and solid in space, and enables  us to understand what light is and how it works,  

which is vital, because that is  how we see the world around us.

I will say that again. Listen carefully! Value  is essential because it is how we see the world,  

and how our brain interprets information  visually. Despite us being able to draw  

objects with outlines, in reality, no outlines  exist, just changes in light and dark, changes  

in value. Even colours are all represented as  values, which becomes apparent if you desaturate  

a photo to view it in black and white. By understanding value, a painter can  

describe form, which we will cover in a bit,  and make an object seem real. Understanding  

this gives us a great deal of control in  how our viewers understand our subjects. 

A portrait artist can push some  parts of the subject back into space,  

and emphasise others by pushing or pulling the  values. A skilled pencil artist can use graphite  

to make light and dark shapes, in 2d, that  pop forms out at us in 3d. They can trick our  

brains into thinking this image  is jumping out of the page!

My favourite book on the subject of values,  is How To Render by Scott Robertson,  

so I will be working from that to drill this,  and to try and internalise what it teaches,  

but the Mitchell Albala landscape  books also have some really good stuff.

Let’s take this up a notch:

Colour

Getting a little harder now. This  includes the infinite amount of  

colours we could deploy in a painting,  but also things like colour harmonies,  

more on light, as well as things like  human psychology and cultural awareness.

This is the thing that most beginners  screw up on, myself included,  

and it’s because we have to understand  value before we can really appreciate  

what colour actually is. This is something  I really want to work on during the 10k,  

but before I jump into it, I want to spend a  lot of time just getting good at values first.

Colours can be as simple as branding choices,  

and as complex as manipulating human  emotion and psychology. Cinematographers  

and colour key artists, for example,  use it to make us feel a certain way.

It’s also very subjective. If we get 3 landscape  painters to all paint the same scene, their colour  

choices will be varied, and this is because  different people see colours very differently,  

and what they choose to emphasise  when using colour in their work. 

The colour harmonies and schemes you may have  seen before, are systems that we can use as  

shortcuts to make our work appealing and  pleasing to the human brain, and represent  

an easier to manage method of learning how to  manipulate colour, so we will be drilling those.

The best resource I have found for learning  this is Colour and Light by James Gurney,  

but I also have a book with the same name  published by 3D Total which is very good.

Okay… the big one,

Form & Perspective

This actually overlaps with value  technically once we start painting,  

but we are thinking simply, and so really  we are talking about whether we can make  

something look believable and  3D, using lines. That’s it.

Technically, it also includes the study of  anatomy, and developing a visual library.  

We might also want to include things  like rhythm, gesture, etc. But remember,  

those are more specific. Think simply  - make it believable, make it 3D.

This pillar is the ability for a  sketch artist to make a scene feel  

deep and three dimensional with no value,  and no colour. When Kim Jung Gi draws a  

cool picture with a ballpoint pen, this  pillar is like 90% of how he does it.

Remember our grouping? How everything  is interrelated? Well no matter if you  

are working your composition, value, or colour,  

you’re ALWAYS working form. It’s  super important. But that’s okay,  

because every drill we do, we will be working  this pillar, so we WILL get very very good at it.

The best book I have found on form is How To  Draw by Scott Robertson, so I will be working  

from that, and I have a few others like Framed  Perspective by Mateu- Mestre, and there are  

some classics by people like Francis Ching, but  honestly, most books on this subject just say  

the same information in slightly different  ways. I have some other books on learning  

things like anatomy that will fall under this  pillar, but don’t worry about those for now.

Still with me so far? We have one more pillar,  and this one is slightly separate from the others,  

but once again, WE WILL ALWAYS BE WORKING  IT no matter what we choose to drill.

Technical Ability with Tools

The final pillar is another very broad pillar,  and contradicting slightly what I said before,  

some of what is inside this pillar might  NOT be relevant to you. It includes all  

the possible ways we could make art - all the  tools. If you are an oil painter, then I want  

you to think of this pillar as all  of your oil paint, brushes, canvas,  

or maybe art boards. You might want to try your  hand at oil, water colour, digital painting,  

and also be good at marker rendering like syd  mead, then this pillar represents those tools.

But the fact is, whatever tools you use, you will  need to get good at drawing with that brush pen,  

or painting with that gouache set,  and every time you change the surface,  

or the brand of paint, or the brush, or even  the environment you paint in, you will have new  

variables to contend with and to learn from. This mastery of this, we will treat as  

separate to mastery of any of the other  pillars. Getting good with your tools.

I don’t have many books on this, although there  are some rated very highly like the Oil Painters  

Bible by Marilyn Scott. I feel the best way  to get better is to just freely experiment,  

but I have read Rediscovering Gouache  by Blau, and would recommend it,  

and the Scott Robertson books emphasise the need  to find good combos of paper and mark making tool,  

and make some suggestions that we will try  out. You could also include competent use  

of any softwares in here, like knowing how to  make Photoshop or Procreate do the things you  

want it to do, the shortcuts, how to make  brushes, how to use adjustment layers, etc.

And that’s about it. Remember the most important  thing is that you think as simply as possible.  

Forget anatomy and perspective, just call  it ‘form’. Forget about the zorn palette  

and triadic colour schemes, just  think ‘colour’, at least for now.

To recap… We have just thought about,  

in very simple terms, what painting and  drawing actually are, regardless of if  

you are a comic book artist or a car designer. In order for us to progress as fast as possible,  

within 10,000 hours, we need to  master those 5 pillars in combination.

We will do that through 2 things  - understanding, and drilling.

I'll share my method for attacking  this soon, but before that,  

in order for this experiment to work and  be valid, we need to establish a baseline…

So join me next time, where I’ll  share some previous work examples,  

and discuss a little more about goal setting.