For someone who wants to improve their craft or learn a new skill, one of the best pieces of advice I can give is what I learned from a curriculum I taught called "Writer's Workshop". The main way we taught was by studying others. Seems funny to say you can become a better writer or gardener or seamstress by doing the opposite. But it's true.
Part of practicing your own craft is to see how others do it. Take a writer you admire and look at how they set up their story. How they draw you in. How they personify or describe or narrate. How do they make transitions? What is their rhythm?
If writing isn't your thing, you can still use the same principle and apply it to your own skill.
For instance, with lettering, you may admire the way an artist connects a hanging letter with the word below it or the emphasis they place on the first letter of each word. For sewing, you might wish you could make neater seams or create an interesting pattern in your crocheting.
All of these things, when you study them, become tools you can use to practice with and find your own style. But the only way to master these skills is to apply them to your own work.
Don't be afraid of doing it wrong and trying again. It may not look great the first time. But practicing means making mistakes and trying new things. Check out
this blog post from Shari Dacon that inspires me to practice anyway.
You may not be ready to go back to school but learning a new skill could mean teaching yourself. Using the Writer's Workshop model of teaching, here's a first-hand look at how a lesson might go.
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Welcome to my Classroom! How are you today? Ready to learn, I hope!
1. Set Objectives
Go into the lesson with purpose. Establish from the onset what you intend to gain and how you'll know if you got it. Answer the question "What do good _______s do?" What do good writers do? What do good graphic artists do? Pick one thing. For example, "Good writers grab their audience at the beginning of the story." Or, "Good graphic artists, when they are lettering, make the width of each line consistent."
2. Instruction
This is when the teacher has your full attention and models the skill. He/she shows you what to look for and how to accomplish what you want. When you're learning by yourself, this is time for you to only focus on what others do. Study their work. Every line. Every stitch. Every word.
3. Guided Practice
As the student, this is a time for you to use the examples and practice applying the skill. This is the safest place to copy another artist's methods so you get the feel for how to do them on your own. Ask for help from the artistic community as needed.
4. Assignment
Take stock of what you've learned and decide how you'll apply it to your work. Go into your independent practice with clearly defined goals and a reasonable timeline. Then know what you need to have when check back in.
5. Indpendent Practice
This is when you let your creativity soar! Use the techniques you learned and make something great with them. This part can be messy. It doesn't have to result in a finished product. It's just practice.
6. Check-in
Compare your techniques to those in the instruction. Check in often enough that you can make adjustments if needed but not so often that your work starts to look exactly like theirs.
7. Evaluation
Measure your work against the objective. Do you need to go back and learn again? Are you ready to apply your skill or do you still need to work on it?
(Repeat Steps 2–6 as necessary)
8. Application
Once you've mastered the skill you should feel confident creating your own work all by yourself. Be yourself!
9. Peer Review
You might check in periodically or ask for a skilled artist to review your draft and offer suggestions. But remember - this is your own. Don't let anyone dissuade you from your vision.
Having another person review your work will help catch anything you may have missed. How many times have we cringed at a misspelled tattoo or a typo on a program? Even a missing line on a sketch can make a big difference.
10. Publish
Make your final rendering and get it out there! One of the most rewarding motivators is when others respond favorably to your work. But they can't do that if they don't see it!
