This week, I explain a key to learning to create that you've always known about and probably totally forgotten. It worked for Mozart. It can work for you.
welcome to art for all the sketchbook school podcast. I am the host, Danny Gregory, and I'm the author of a dozen or so books on art and creativity. And I'm a sketchbook artist. And today. I'd like to tell you about a powerful drawing technique, that's going to improve what you make and also how you interact with the world. So what were the very first things that you ever learned? Well, unless you're Mozart, they were probably things like walking and talking and using a spoon and a sippy cup. You learn these skills from somebody who knew how to do them? Well, like your mom or your older brother. And do you learn them by, by watching, by watching intently, check out how a baby or toddler watches. It's like a lion on the Velt or my dog as we unpack groceries, unblinking rigid with attention. And speaking of Mozart, how do you think he became a prodigy at three? He watched his older sister take harpsichord lessons and he watched his father play the violin. It's no coincidence that so many prodigies from Michael Jackson to Wayne Gretzky were the youngest kids in large families, lots of people to stare at and to learn from. When you learned this way, you create a vision of yourself performing the skill, a mental video that you play over and over as the scene loops, it's burned into your brain. It creates new neural pathways and locks in the nuances of the skill you notice, not only the steps of the expert take, but. The intensity and the rhythms with which they perform the actions, the way that all the component parts of actions come together into one cohesive, coordinated whole, and in time, these observations lead to fluid and confident motions. Learning a physical skill is a really complex process. And most of it is non-verbal. You're programming your head and your body to dance together in a thousand little ways. And you have to keep refining those dance steps, polishing them until there are no hitches or hesitations until they run like greased Teflon, dipped clockwork. That's how you learn to walk to dribble a soccer ball to drive a car, to play the guitar. And to draw you program neurons. If you want to improve your golf swing, watch Ben Hogan on YouTube. If you want to improve your jump shot, watch LeBron during the NBA finals. If you want to improve your drawing. Watch any of my sketchbook films or the demo videos on schedule school, watch them again and again. And don't watch passively like you're dozing off in front of a Seinfeld rerun. Sit forward, engage, focus, mimic, and stare. Let your body respond. As you watch, feel your muscles tense, your fingers Twitch. Throw yourself into it and absorb the rhythms, the linkages, the unspoken logic behind the scenes, your meat computer takes longer to train than Silicon chips do, but it lasts longer too. Once you forge these connections that are gonna last you a lifetime. Neglected they'll grow rusty and overgrown, but with a little practice, you can prune them and get them up and running again, like a long forgotten stretch of railroad track. You never fully forget how to ride a bike and the same holds true for the network that you've built between your brain, your eyes and your hands, so that your pen. We'll make lovely marks in your sketchbook. Stare, engage, mimic, and repeat. Thanks for joining me today. I'll create something new for you again next week until then I'm Danny Gregory. And this is art for all.