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all right welcome back friends time for
some food for thought
today we're gonna rethink some things
we're gonna find out why the way to
become a better artist is much more
counterintuitive then you might think
but I will also try to convince you that
to become a better portrait painter for
example you actually might want to stop
painting faces so without further ado
buckle up friends and let's take a deep
dive into the mind of an artist so I've
been painting a few landscapes recently
and before that I've worked on a few of
my large still life paintings and if
you've watched one of my life screams
recently you have seen me create some
fan art with gouache paints me painting
hurdler and to be precise but the point
is I painted all kinds of different
things recently and I constantly do for
various reasons not everything I paint
is supposed to go into a gallery
sometimes I paint things just to bring
across a point in a YouTube video other
times because I'm just curious and yet
other times what I paint is just
supposed to be a fun and enjoyable
painting experience for me
let's think about this question for a
bit how do you become a better portrait
painter well nine times out of ten the
answer to this question will probably be
that to become a better portrait painter
you need to paint a lot of portraits and
you need to practice it presumably you
need to become a better craftsman and
the more portraits you paint the better
the mind immediately goes to the 10,000
hour rule but guess what in reality it's
fair to say that when it comes to art
the very opposite is true you don't want
to be an expert in painting faces what
you really want to be is a jack of all
trades master of none
let me explain intuitively we all tend
to think that whoever wants to develop a
skill or become exceptionally good at
something as to focus intensely and rack
up as many hours of deliberate practice
as possible become a specialist if you
will but in most fields especially
complex fields like art that's actually
not true if that was the case you just
need to practice drawing for example and
once you can draw better than the
average artist you'd also automatically
be successful or even be one of the most
successful but as we know that's not
true that's not how things work great
art or a successful piece of art isn't
defined by one single parameter
technique in this case it's much more
complex than that let's talk about
comics for a second a famous study about
coming creators and the commercial and
critical success of comics since the 70s
predicted that the more comics a creator
made the better the comics would be
makes sense right and the higher their
average value would be they also
predicted that and the more resources a
publisher has the greater the quality
and the more successful the product
would be I mean it sounds intuitive
right but guess what these assumptions
were wrong
it's neither experienced nor financial
assets that drove success what actually
drove success was the range of a comic
creators experience across different
genres the more creator had worked in
different genres from comedy to crime
from fantasy to nonfiction the more
successful they were so the major factor
wasn't just experience but the breadth
of experience how widespread it is and
when you think about it this only makes
sense one of the issues that many
experts or specialists faces that they
have a very narrow focus and therefore
they tend to have explicit ideas on how
things work another example of this can
be seen when Nobel prize-winning
scientists are compared to other
scientists Nobel Prize winners are 22
times more likely to be amateur actors
magicians photographers performers
meaning they have interests and passions
outside of their respective fields and
this phenomenon can be seen in various
areas over and over again
where the interest and expertise in a
wide variety of fields triumph over
having a narrow focus and I think it's
pretty easy to see the parallels when it
comes to art let's take the example of
the portrait painter again painting
portraits over and over again might make
you better at painting portraits at
least technically but what it can't get
you better at is thinking outside of the
box being creative and coming up with
new and innovative ways of painting a
portrait when it comes to being an
artist experimenting embracing failure
and having a wide range of experience is
much better than specialization being a
generalist rather than a specialist
makes you more creative more flexible
and most importantly lets you make
connections that more specialized peers
can't see if you were to ask me now how
I became good at painting faces or
portraits the last thing I would say is
by painting portraits to be honest I
have learned more about portrait
painting by painting large flowers their
lives for over a year then I have
learned from painting human faces for 10
years but what does this all mean well
for one it means that you can't forget
about the 10,000 hour rule or at least
we need to rethink it because if you
spend 10,000 hours painting faces I
would argue you are wasting a lot of
time instead spend 10,000 hours doing
all kinds of different artistic things
if you really want to become better at
painting faces and become a better
artist as counterintuitive as it may
seem you might want to stop painting
faces for a second and try exploring
some other fields so that it can come
back to painting faces with a ton of new
experiences and the ability to find new
and creative solutions for old problems
and this is what's called lateral
thinking one of the most important
skills and artists can have and it
essentially means this being able to
think creatively or outside of the box
in order to solve problems which is
exactly what creating art is about and
to illustrate just how powerful having a
breadth of experience combined with
lateral thinking is I want to leave you
with a little story the story of gunpei
Yokoi a Japanese man who didn't score
well in his electronics exam and
therefore had to settle for a job as a
machine maintenance worker at a playing
card Factory
a man with varied interests in ballroom
dancing model trains or playing the
piano but not a particularly gifted
engineer but nonetheless it's this very
same man's ideas and creations that
changed how millions of people even to
this day interact with games because the
playing card company's name is Nintendo
and you're quois literally game-changing
contribution to the world is the game
boy your coy might not have been a
gifted engineer at the cutting edge of
tech but what he was good at is
perceiving his environment in ways that
talented and more specialized peers just
couldn't he realized that he didn't need
to be at the cutting edge of tech he
could just combine old sheep and
well-understood technologies in new and
creative ways and even though the
technology for the game boy was long out
of date by the time it appealed
your koi still created what became the
best-selling video game console of the
20th century not because it was a
specialist but because of his curiosity
and his interests in different fields
and his ability to think outside of the
box guys thanks so much for watching if
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a good time special thanks to all my $10
patrons and the artists of the
roundtable Marcos wah bility Henderson
Brendon Rosella Cecelia Hatari Tegan
felled Christopher Morris a PLC
Gabriella Milner Lydia Broderick Kendra
Quinn Sam where deffenbaugh XANA fine
art Anna Torv ena and
Madison duh thank you so much for being
so supportive and for helping me create
these videos and thank you all out there
for watching them if you enjoyed the
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up it really helps the channel out and
yeah have good
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