Colouring Tip: Finishing is Just as Important as Starting!
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Making a start is the number one thing you need to do to improve your colouring (after all, you can't improve upon nothing, right?), but then this right here is my second most important tip. When learning a new technique it's important to remember just that... that we are learning
The first time you try a new technique is going to be your worst attempt because you don't have practice or experience behind you. It's really important that we don't judge our first attempts - this includes your class work. Try not to go into a class thinking it needs to be a perfect finished project - classes are experiment time, troubleshooting, play time, practice time. A class should be about just learning new things, pushing yourself to be challenged, and embracing the mistakes that come along with this - see the lessons that they are teaching you. If you remember that learning is not about perfection but about growth then you can release any pressure and focus on the lesson not the project.
Too often I see people put colouring aside or give up when something is hard or they feel they've made a mistake. When we give ourselves permission to stop listening to the voice saying it's not good enough and just finish the colouring, we then have an opportunity to step back, and assess and appreciate the lessons behind what we've created. When we colour, we colour "up close" - and really scrutinise all the details and areas we don't love, however that's not how colouring is meant to be viewed. Consider Monet's impressionist work - upclose it is just blobs of paint on a canvas, but with space you see the bigger picture.
Giving ourselves some perspective by stepping back and seeing the picture as a whole helps to give the techniques some context - allows our eye to "see" what we are communicating. What was once a glaringly obvious mistake forms part of the bigger picture. And with any mistakes, the absolute worst case scenario is you've learned more about technique and how to tweak it for the result you want in the future. Make learning about the lessons, not about perfection. So even when you feel unsure, keep going and reserve critique until you can assess the picture as a whole, and even then make sure to celebrate each step on your journey, regardless of the finished result - as long as you are trying, you are growing
Want tips on your colouring? Our classes always come with free one on one private tutoring aswell so you can get real tips on how to grow your colouring (this is *not* done in our group here but instead done privately so we can chat one on one about tips personal to your work). **If you want to learn more, why not try out a free class this week over at www.kitandclowder.com - pictured classes here are the Mermaid Pencils Class and the Tropic Paradise Markers Class
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