How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

I showed my grandma (98) a photo on an iPad. Her immediate reaction: “there’s no reason to paint realism anymore”. The method described in this article might work for realism in oils, but please don’t accept it as the exclusive way to create art.

Art is about understanding the tools you’re using to create (for example how paint mixes, moves, dries, interacts with a surface), then choosing which tools to use and how to use those tools to convey an experience to an audience. Art is about experimentation, exploration, communication. Art is about studying & talking with other artists to learn how they work, the processes they use, how they solve problems; sometimes copying them and then extending beyond.

My point of view on this developed as I studied art in high school, through AP art, and then minored in fine art in college alongside my engineering degree. Plus many hours painting with my grandma and my mom.

1. Copy something you like. Take a sentence/paragraph/page/scene and just retype it in. This sounds crazy, but pushing the words not only into your brain but back out through your fingers gives your brain a different avenue into them.

2. Object writing. Learned this one from Pat Pattison's writing better lyrics, but most of the techniques are generally applicable. You take an object/idea, and for 5-10 minutes write about it using all 6 senses (the standard five plus motion). The more you do this the more your writing will shift (at least in my experience).

3. Journaling. Morning pages (3 pages at the very start of your day) is a common one for writers, learning to take the filter off and just write. A lot of crap might come out, and you'll just write about the day before or your concerns about the day ahead a lot, but the act of putting the words down will help you shift your writing.

4. This one isn't a drill but I wanted to include it: explore other types of writing. If you are interested in academic writing, try making short stories or poems. Exploring entirely different uses of words will help you build new, because intent shapes the way the brain uses the words, and learning to unlock different pathways can have surprising results.

This is so true. I learn piano myself and I'm a trackmania gamer for years. Learning a piano piece (some bars or full length for easy pieces) is quite the same as learning a track layout in trackmania. You have to go through the whole, regardless of the speed to see at least where it leads you. And if you just restart after the slightest error, you will perfect just the begin of the track yet you will struggle every time once you reach the unknown parts.

Painting establishes a relation between the painter and static entities (subject, colors...). They interact in many ways, however the painter is the main 'motor' and 'will'.

Basketball is different because a player interacts with his teammates and opponents, he isn't the sole will at play. However I can see how experience may lead a coach to reckon that some individual ways (types of actions or reactions) are statistically better than other ones, either because their intrinsic rate of success is higher or because they benefit from teamwork, leading him to drill them in order to have them select the best ones and apply them properly. It may create a "team of robots" (sort of!) which may be crushed by an opponent team playing in a deliberately unusual (albeit not absurd) way, established to counter the particular automatic actions and reactions of the "robot team".

Individual sports are different because there is no teamwork. Combat sports are particularly interesting because you need to scrim (spar) not simply to verify the effects of drills but in order to learn what no drill can effectively teach you: a certain mental state, coping with stress, simultaneously integrating many dynamic blurry variables (related to time & space)...

Drill, barely spar and only use it to check what you gained from drills, then hop on a ring against a person who spared properly... and good luck to you (you will need it)!