5 HUGE reasons some artists never improve 

Fear of other’s criticisms or trying new techniques also destroys creativity.

Painting from your head! So true and incredibly common unfortunately. I think many artists confuse imagination (art out of their head) with creativity. Watercolor painter Nita Engle used to say "you've got to have the facts before you create." Using reference is essential but being creative with it is totally different. Incorrect practice is also a great point. Practice should include problem solving. If you're not identifying problems and trying to solve them you're not improving.

I've noticed that when I started improving the most is when I learned observation watching real time videos with reference photos. You see so many tutorials on youtube but 90% of them don't have a reference photo to compare to, you just watch someone paint or draw. When I started watching artists draw/paint with the reference photo next to them , I started to observe how and why they did what they did and It made me realize that even though I wasn't actively drawing, I was practicing observation in a more relaxed and deep way than when I draw . So, the next time I tried drawing something, I followed the same reasoning , observing and taking my time, and the drawing turned way better than usual. I lack patience, I think mainly because of the time lapses and such on youtube because, even though I know drawing and painting is not that fast, when I do it, I unconsciously try to be fast.

“Some kind of poultry” 5:17 had me 😂🤣😂

What I’ve noticed is that a lot of people want to hurry up and “be an artist.” They don’t study anything about composition, color, drawing, or especially, they don’t study the art of accomplished painters. They just plow in. I’ve seen some in my community who produce awful paintings year after year. I believe they just have no ability. No one tells them the truth. They want to “be” an artist. I see a lot of artists producing videos claiming to show how to make “quick and easy” art….no experience or knowledge needed. We live in a world where no one wants to work at something…again and again I see videos demonstrating “quick tricks”. Good painting done result from tricks.

I think trying different mediums is a massive help,plus drawing or painting different things, just to broaden your skills

Your illustrative comparison between the artist and the surgeon was....really fantastic. Simple. Easy to understand. And correct.

Oh gods. The whole "real artists don't use pictures/references" thing is something I've seen too much of. And was also hit by a bit (thanks those people!). It's even worse when you consider that I've ended up having a pretty good case of aphantasia. I always felt like such a total numpty for struggling to imagine how certain things curved or overlapped and it made me feel absolutely unable to do anything with art. As it turns out, looking at things to see how they work isn't a bad thing and is, in fact, done by every artist I've seen who's actually good. I do think a lack of willingness to experiment also hurts people. Like trying new ways to blend for softened edges, either by being unwilling to try something new on an ongoing piece of work, or by being unwilling to "waste" some materials on some practice paper/canvas to at least figure out if a technique has merit. Also some people's allergies to layering. I know that feeds more into making pieces look good, but folks who just pick a corner and start there and go across instead of making a few passes over the whole piece tend to struggle from what I've seen. It's definitely still possible to "one layer" art, but that's going to be such an uphill battle I feel like.

This is wonderful! It’s not just about style it’s about technical ability and our understanding of light, shadow, textures, perspective, etc.. thank you :)

Lisa I can’t say this enough. I absolutely adore you. I could literally listen to you talking all day lol.

The problem with working out of your imagination, is that the values will always be off. That’s what I realized one day when I started to observe more and work from an image

Your honesty and constructive critiques are golden. Bless you Lachri Fine Art, great video, you’ve made my morning along with your invaluable sense of humour 😂👌

Seriously thank you! I see Artists that are teaching beginners here on RU-vid for years and their pictures look like something my 10 year old niece could draw. Funnily they only get positive feedback, I assume because viewers feel it’s rude to criticize art.

When I was a teen, I was stuck in the same style for a few years. It helped tremendously when I found artists online (not trying to sound pretentious, but I was one of the few "best" in my art class when it came to realism, but in reality, I was mediocre outside of HS).

Great video with a lot of wonderful advice.! My painting didn't improve until I admitted to myself that I needed to learn to draw, too.

I feel like learning to be good at realism will help me be better at non realistic work. I just don't understand how I can get better at stylized work if I don't understand the basics of how that item should work. Like if I want to press the limits of what I cat looks like I need to first fully understand how to draw a realistic cat.

Even in my surrealism type or more abstract art pieces, I use lots of reference photos and put pieces of them together. In my mind, you can't really styalize until you can make it at least accurate. When I used to teach kids art I would say, "once you learn all the rules. . . then you can break them!"

I measure my ability as an artist in my ability outside of drawing from reference. I'm standing on the side of the street, paper and pencil in hand, what can I do? That's it. Other people can measure themselves however they want, that's fine. What I'll say is I'll use whatever it takes to make that ability better. Reference? Yes. Realism? Yes. Abstraction? Yes Autopainting, painting with color, painting with black, painting with water, books, videos, tutorials, other artists. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It doesn't matter. It all works and gets thrown in like coal to flame. Just keep it going...

Hi, thanks for this tips. I’m 36, I started painting 3 years ago and for me I love the process, painting gives me lots of joy but I never seem to like the end results. But when I need motivation I look back at my first attempts of paintings or my firsts sketchbooks and I see the progress.

I intentionally wanted to be an outside artist, kind of fun after 20 years to start some classes and realize I have gotten many things right but was missing so much more, so Id say it was ego and rejection of an art world I dont understand that made me want to go my own way with it, no regrets though I have more time and resources to pursue art now and a much better attitude than younger me.

Oh jeez. Been studying how to do anatomy and shading using grids and so on, but wasn't able figure out why i couldn't move my hand down certain angles after going back and forth with the reference photo. Juggling that with tracing might help with muscle memory, so thanks for pointing that out!

I wish I had some one like Lisa to help me when I was young, and still had my whole life ahead of me.

Up until very recently - I did the imagination thing. I don’t know if it’s getting better but it is definitely easier with a reference. I do not do it professionally , but for friends and for fun

I’ve been told that a good abstract, most of the time comes from an artist that draws very well. I’ve been experimenting in multimedia and I’ve done landscapes, dog portraits for a long time. Over 30 yrs. I love to try new things and I still take lessons after 30 yrs of painting. It’s all fun

I was in art school in the 90's, community college and then on to SAIC (Chicago). Not once, did anyone allow us to copy or use reference photos. In fact I feel like I never got a formal training in drafting and rendering. We did use live models and still life set-ups but copying was discouraged. It's so unfortunate because I feel like all that money was wasted. I'd have preferred to go through the atelier course and my skills would have been honed and I wouldn't be struggling with realism like I am today. Now I'm trying to go back and relearn.

This a great I feel there's so much bad advice or gatekeepers thinking like "real artists don't need photos". All my art is better because of references photos if not multiple to draw from. This so relatable I remember when I felt that I had learned enough from beginner classes and needed a challenge but even the teacher said I was doing well enough. It really kept me stuck in the same place.

I enjoy going to our open studio at the local art center a couple of times a month. There are 3 other ladies there each working on their current project. All have been painting for years. Occasionally I get asked what I think of something they are working on and I ask humorously ( using Stefan Baumann"s phrase "What were you thinking?"). One lady, like the one you referred too, is painting a landscape from her imagination. Another is painting her version of a photo of a trombone with the intention of using gold paint for it's color. The third lady is some what mentally challenged and I pretty much praise what she does. I enjoy giving them ideas to help make the paintings better and try to encourage them to really looked the objects they are painting as home work for the next time we meet. Just recently watching one of your videos, I learn some stuff that when I applied it to the piece I was working on made a huge difference and I felt my skill level had leveled up to a new plateau. We are creator beings who are always growing and expanding when we are not blocking ourselves.

Some people don't have access to those who can demonstrate new techniques in a way they can learn. Some have no art community to fire-up and/or encourage their efforts. Circles of those who will constructively critique you are HUGE part of improving your work (your building are skewed because your work is 90* off your viewing angle etc.). These are why 'movements' like The Fauves', The Impressionists' come to be. And why artists like you who share so generously are really important.

Enjoyed this video but especially the "wrong way to practice" segment . Thank you

"Hello, Grammar!" like it's a person. I love your humor!

The cartoonists, comics book creators still use realistic references when drawing their characters. Unless they are Kim Jung Gi. :D As for practice, you mean deliberate practice, where you are paying full attention to what you are doing and correcting mistakes and learn to avoid them in the future. Professional artists, who really draw from imagination (like dragons, beasts etc.) use references of real animals and then put the bits they need in their painting. Also, using reference saves you so much time, because figuring it all out in your head is pretty difficult. I used to draw from imagination, but references are so much better to work with.

After reading some of the comments.. I would like to add that I learned a great deal by painting from life. Meaning set up a live model or take a life drawing class at a local college or club. Paint from still life’s. Set up an Apple. Put a light on it. Or an egg. Many good books. Drawing from the right side of the brain. By Betty Edwards. Go outside. It still blows my mind. It’s not easy and can be very frustrating! But like you said. Don’t give up. Stretch. Get up and stand away from your painting. That helps. Also I never say finished until I get away from it and then look again with fresh eyes. Go slow at first. Then faster. Then slowly again. I could go on forever. I think I will get out some pencils and draw. Love your work and your videos. Been feeling following for a while. Fellow Texan. In the Panhandle. Amarillo

Art is such a mental exercise that it takes time to understand what is right or wrong in what a person creates. We can all remember growing as an artist and things we created that seemed great at the time, but eventually saw the flaws when we got better. If you look at a beginning artist using 3D graphics software, such as Poser or the free DAZ Studio, the software can provide a fairly realistic looking render. The posed human figures look unrealistic, not due to the 3D models, but due to the artist not understanding how to create a natural pose. An artist has to develop mental artistic skills to understand they're doing something wrong. It takes practice to advance that skill.

I stumbled onto the technique of tracing and then drawing. It's so great. I trace a few times and then try and draw freehand, and often I like my freehand better because I might stylize or something. But the tracing helps me understand the things like how perspective should be.

For me, realism has always been a means to an end: If I want to express my ideas I feel I need the control of media and technique to achieve my vision. Also, you know you are watching a vid from a real artist when she still has paint on her hands. 😉

For me ...skipping learning to draw or continue to draw is the biggest reason...many jump into world of colours directly! At least drawing should go parallely to your paintings. Also with no professional critique...which I suffer from...only my friends and family commenting ...wow that's good! I need professional critique. Recently joined discord of few artists and I'm enjoying critiquing sensibly and getting critique for my work too

I admire YOUR realism ! Lol

👏👏👏👏👏👏. Thanks again Lisa!

Paint from your head... actually is the slogan for intuitive paintings...which is unrealistic paintings...but some give you good feel too

Some kind of poultry 🙈😂 you crack me up Lisa……..great advice as always…. Love your straight talking ❤️

Thank you for everything you do. Watching your videos has helped me push myself and I have Improved immensely. Still room to grow still but I'm impressing people now. Thank you

Thank you 😊🙏 perfect take on this subject.

Some kind of poultry??? Omg, I laughed out loud.

I thought you were going to tell us to keep going on a painting thru the ugly stages, like you have in some of the inktense videos (layering). I've seen folks like this who never improve and a big problem is that they never learned to draw. I'd recommend the Betty Edwards book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Learning to draw is learning to see. I prefer drawing from life when possible, though I'm going to take photos of a winter scene, no way to paint plein air in the frozen north. Luckily spring just arrived today.

I really like your videos, your tips are worth gold.😊

You missed my pet peeve. It drives me crazy when people post very poorly done art on social media and they get smothered with hearts and fake compliments. If mom and dad and all the folks on FaceBook are telling them how amazing they are they have no motivation too get better and they don't. The people I see progressing rapidly post a piece of art and state please tear this to pieces with brutal honesty. They progress amazingly quickly. Those that say gentle suggestions accepted are not good now and no better later. . . If you are too timid to accept instruction and too afraid to go beyond half way finished "because you might wreck it", you have zero chance of becoming anything more than your struggling 7 year old self. . .

Thanks

I love your art, your videos. I aspire to be as good an artist as you. I'll keep trying. I refer to myself as a student of art, as I'm still learning. My style, I guess is photorealism. It was not intended, it just turned out that way. This year I want to study impressionism and pallet knife painting. I'm expanding my comfort zone, you could say.

Also another one, is for which brands are better for work. Many people say that Daler Rowney supplies are not good, but I like their artist grade supplies.

There's so many people that won't accept this. And they are often illustrators or people that just doodle. I just got an angry response on a comment I made about this in a video where I said that with no references you can't improve. And someone took it personally and got very defensive

I moved from realism because I had no heart for it so it prevented me from getting better. I loved non representative expresion and my paintings do not look like 7 year old;s. I was getting better faster when I was not bound by reality. Now when I draw or paint I have to take into consideration shape value color composition and designem into proper piece. Sometimes people do not get better because they are stuck with mental assumptions.

I think some people who do art just don’t observe things in real life closely enough to replicate it.

Great ideas to think about

Excellent advice 👌

I had a friend almost a decade ago that got me into art. I remembered her and thought she must be amazing at drawing now….. no she draws the same and my art is above hers… I’m not even trying to be rude, it’s crazy to me, how some people will just choose to stay the same.

Great video! really enjoyed watching it.

I never understood people who excuse poor art by saying it's a style, or it's made up. So? If I paint a dragon, I still want that dragon to look as real as I can. Because then it'll be beautiful. It doesn't matter if dragons don't exist. lol. And, I've found, that an understanding of light, dark and contrast is really really important for realism. Even more important than form or details. Cause if the light and dark is wrong, in the wrong places, in the wrong values, it doesn't look right even if everything else is great.

I've always felt slightly uncomfortable defining someone's art as bad or reading titles like do's and don't as art can be very subjective, I also tend to be reluctant to use titles such as "easy" this or that as I'm aware of how hard it is to develop artistic skills it can take years and years to reach a certain level of skill thus It's understandable that one might not be great at it for a while or nervous to try something different. I've also seen artist of beginner level skills earn a respectable living and speed past me in terms of business income while the art wasn't at a very high creative stage which goes back to the point that art is subjective we might see the work as stick figures while someone else loves it, and if one has the business savvy they can earn a living even at a beginner level. but I respect and agree with your points that we have to be willing to continue to improve and step out of our comfort zone. I think a lot success with art comes down to confidence and business savvy unfortunately for me it's been a slow process of learning as I had a very unorthodox upbringing I lived similarly to a child entertainer on the road with an entertainment family while also having to navigate a disability hence learning business savvy has taken longer than it might for someone who lived a more mainstream lifestyle. home school, hospitals, and music recording was the only lifestyle I knew for a long time as I was protected by loved ones until I was in my early mid 20s business endeavors were closely monitored and managed by family back then. I am now free to make my own choices and family has zero involvement now but it's been a steap learning curve, I think I'm doing reasonably well all things considered but you're right.

HI Lisa. I did watched all your videos about how to price the art. Would you make another video, a lot had changed right now. I did go up and down with my prices but still no luck 😢. Thank you ❤

I want to be good at portraits, but I am almost afraid to create terrible faces and bad portraits and I don't practice them because of how intimidating the portrait is! It gets frustrating because I cannot make things look the way I want to and then they do look like Picasso paintings when that was definitely NOT the intention. Ill spend 5 hours on just the shape of the eye and then I finally get it and move onto the other one and get the shape just right after another five hours but then I look at where I placed it and its too low or high. Grrrr so then I put it away and don't go back for a looooong time rather than starting over. Then I move onto urban sketching or landscapes because it's easier. I guess all that to say that I'm lazy. Also another thing is I don't know what skills to really focus on to improve. Should it be drawing first? Values? Color? Composition? Perspective? So many skills to improve! Where to put my focus is difficult to say. Thank you Lisa for all your hard work! Your channel is one of the first ones I found whenI was getting back into art! You're so down to earth and real. Blessings to you! Praying for you!

Something that's confused me is artists saying their work is "loose" when to me it just looks bad. They say they like a childlike look to their art. For instance their birds legs were doing something birds legs can't do anatomically. It was cute, but loose? I actually appreciate these artists work but it's the use of the term "loose" that I'm not understanding. I feel like it's being used like you said "my style". When indeed perspective, depth, proportions are being ignored. Again I love these artist work and their not caring or looseness does allow them to capture other elements. Though one of them won't paint smiling people because it turns out weird. That seem like they are limiting themselves there. Anyway great video!

Everyone’s an artist until it’s time to do artist shyte. Learn the basic principles,learn the mediums properties and learn to recognize when your ego is the fundamental issue. Although a true artist has the ability to critique their own work they will ‘Always’ be open to the critique offered by those with the best interest of the piece in question.

random person: I just like abstract... Lisa: No, it just bad realism 😅

Because I thought artists don't need photos I stopped drawing went I was 14 and went to study Biotechnology. Eventually after finishing university I found job as designed, but still always thinking that I can't draw. After many years, probably thanks to pandemy and a lot spare time I had 😅, I started to draw and watched videos where artist were saying they need reference to draw... 😳 I thought "why noone told me this before????". Now I'm painting.

😀I wouldn't have dared to say it out loud.

If you can, get to a life class. I’ve been going weekly since Jan and it’s great…

My arch nemesis is sight size. I keep making the same mistakes with it and get so frustrated. If Anyone has suggestions on how to digest sight sizing feel please let me know!

Abstract is done beautifully by people who are wonderfully talented in everything that the know exactly what it is about an object that is beautiful and gets it’s essence exactly right. I explain it like Einstein. His E=mc^2. It’s only 2 variables to equate one. A child can write that. But it’s all the work it took to put intense meaning to a very complicated equation that Einstein “dumbed” it down to its essence. That is his genius. Simple, absolute, and all encompassing. Matter of fact that is the goal in mathematics. Get down to the lowest common denominator we are taught as children. Arts are exactly like math, except with colors instead of numbers. If it doesn’t work, there is always a reason that can be explained by a matter of equation. So when I see someone trying to pass off 1+1=1.9ish as true bc it’s just as many values as the other equations.. makes me sad as they lost the point. Art is the E=mc^2 of the human experience. You’ve got to learn how to experience before you can express. They just got lost somewhere along the way.

Everything’s the same except ‘oh I made it a little smaller’ lol I felt that.

I can think of another reason artists don't improve---too much false praise. There is a big difference between encouraging someone and being supportive of their efforts, and flat out lying to them about their talent to avoid hurt feelings. Often these are relatives and close friends of the artist, but includes well-meaning people who want to spare feelings, or genuinely think the art is "better than I could do" (even though they themselves have never tried to do any kind of art at all). You get enough of these "encouraging" people and the artist won't believe anyone who might tell them otherwise. If it is just someone who likes to do art for fun and has no intention of trying to sell or show the art somewhere or enter it in a competition, etc--then there is no reason to launch into any criticism or advice if they didn't ask for it. This sort of thing happens a LOT especially dealing with young children. Obviously you don't try to crush a 4 year old's first attempt at drawing something you can't even quite identify. You can always find something positive to say, like 'I like the colors you chose" or "that's interesting, do you want to tell me about your picture?" What am talking about is when the child is upset that their teacher did not give their picture as much praise as mom or dad did, or that if the picture was meant to fulfill a class requirement and the child did not follow directions but did something entirely different and received a poor or mediocre grade (there is a time and place for a child to freely explore and experiment with their "artistic vision"). The parent will then put the rejected picture on TIkTok or RU-vid and without ANY CONTEXT of why the teacher said what they did, make it seem that the teacher is a big meanie because she pointed out that there was something wrong with the picture. Usually, without knowing all the facts, the picture is a nice colorful piece of art by a child, but instead of saying that or some other appropriate bit of praise, you have all these adults saying that they want to BUY the child's crayon drawing on newsprint, and comparing the child to Picasso, Van Gogh, and even Vermeer (because the lady in the kid's painting has earrings?) Instead of encouraging the child as they should so they will continue to do art but try to learn ways to improve or do different techniques, you got a kid with very average looking kid drawings that is constantly told they are an artistic "prodigy". And this child grows up, still drawing or painting pretty much the same way, and then wonders why their artwork is never accepted for competitions, gallery showings, etc. and why no one will buy their art outside of friends and families and well-meaning folks who might take pity on them for reasons that have nothing to do with art. Again, BIG difference between finding things to appreciate about a beginner's artwork (especially if it is a kid--you do want to be kind) and flat out making them think they are "natural genuines" and don't need to learn anything or change anything they are currently doing. I think it's funny that people will compare a badly rendered portrait to works by Picasso without realizing that Picasso started out doing very realistic artwork and then became more abstract as an artistic choice--not because he couldn't draw a properly proportioned person. As you pointed out, big difference between "abstract" and "bad".

Having a "God given talent" is the desire to create and the drive to do it not the technical aspect of it!! Also again about making art out of their "head", it's the elements you put together such as you Lisa having fireflies and lightbulbs etc in a painting with animals that is the "artistic" part, you still need to draw or paint it correctly!! You painted a turtle with a tree coming out of his back.... you still used a reference for the turtle and the tree!!!

The whole no reference or no photo thing makes no sense to me. Look at historical masters: DaVinci, Degas, Monet, Van Gogh.... They didn't have photos to use, but they weren't making those up. As for abstract, I got to see a Mondrian exhibit at the MoMA years ago, starting when he was painting trees, just plain ol' trees, to the bold, linear abstract work that he's known for now. It was fascinating to see the evolution of his work.

If you accept the premise that art is no more than self-expression, many of the flawed reasons mentioned can be explained. Art in its base is visual communication, which starts with self-expression, yes, but it doesn't end with it. Understanding one's place in a larger community is a big mental hurdle to take, and requires knowing oneself in relation to others (including one's past self). Which means comparing without judging. There are no absolutes in this world, so things have to be measured and compared if you want to understand them, preferably dispassionately, or at least without the emotional baggage every person carries. Yes, you like this and that, but: why? Sorry for the rambling.

I have a friend who does watercolors. They look awful, like a 2nd grader. She brags that all ideas come from her head & she never uses reference or does any tracing, I call it slop. Can't convince her to try anything new - she gets very defensive.

You are wrong about abstract, realism was the only art until the camera was invented.

She is so encouraging but real at the same time wow...