Bolt of lightening time! I got striketh by the apparent contradiction to my former beliefs (strong, firmly held ones, now laying shattered and messy on the rug) that experience more than practice equals progress. I used to say that I didn’t have to pick up a pencil for a while but when I did and proceeded to draw, the experience accumulated in my brain led to a better rendering because the knowledge and memory was there to be drawn upon when used. In other words, you’ll draw an ear much more realistically after seeing ten thousand of them, so life experience aids the process.
However, when I did sit down to draw the past few days, with a fairly clear image in my mind of what I wanted, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t draw eyes, the mouth, the nose–well, I always had problems with noses, but I couldn’t even draw a spider web. So while I still believe the unconscious experience will help, there’s something more important to it than that; and, it applies to writing because that’s proving out a different theory–it’s practice that’s equal or even more important!
As we live our daily lives, the creativity grows because of experience and discoveries. But the technical skills, the execution of the creativity requires practice to hone the skill. Makes sense; we go a little further each time, get a little better at it too.
So now, in order to refine my artistic skills, I must draw a picture of every nose I see. Not quite, but I think you know what I mean.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Excellent way of putting it. The same goes true for things other than art (and sports): chemistry, history, etc. I tell my students this and they still don’t get the association sometimes. Although there is a darker side to this as well: sometimes there is innate ability for certain things. No matter how hard you practice your basketball, you may never be Michael Jordan, genetics does play a role. Parents do not understand this when they tell their children that anyone can grow up to be President. OK, that was a very bad example, but I think you know what I am getting at.
Precisely right. I had to practice continually to learn to shoot a longbow instinctively (w/o sights) as well as build up to a higher draw weight on the bow which helps the trajectory of the arrow. After years of getting to the point of being really good, I taught my niece, who was more into sports and understood the discipline of learning the right way to do things and practice. But within the first half hour of watching her shoot, I could see that she was going to be a “natural.” Her hand-eye coordination, her depth perception, all of these traits played a large part in her success.