Up until quite recently, studies for me have been something that I've done and told myself "yes this will make me better" without really paying much attention to what I'm doing and just reproducing a picture. Often the results look good but I find myself lacking in extra knowledge on what I just did.

Something I did for the 30 day art challenge- I reproduced it well enough but didn't really learn anything from it.

Part of the issue I had was my own need/want to always upload GOOD art- I wanted to show off my skills in every piece I uploaded and I wanted to upload everything I did, so I fixated myself on how good the finished piece was rather than what I actually took from it, absent mindedly thinking it would magically improve my skill the more I did.

Another 30 day art challenge- final outcome was good but I didn't really learn anything about hands.

Thinking about this, I took a new way of thinking to my 'studies' and it certainly helped (a LOT).

Without the mindset of 'this needs to look good' I focused more on what I needed to learn from what I was doing.

Environment/Landscape is a weakness of mine that I really want to work on- here I did some little thumbnails of some photos and paintings to try and work out what tones went into a successful landscape and where the darkest and lightest parts where in relation to the composition.

 These thumbnail studies certainly aren't much to show off but as I wasn't focused on what they looked like I felt like I learned an awful lot about what I was hoping to.

A pre-raphaelite colour study. As you can see its unfinished and the face isn't accurate or anything but I learned a lot about the colour in this painting and the way the painting was lit to draw attention to the woman. Doing this study changed the way I looked at pre-raphaelite paintings.

I didn't want to show this off to anyone- I'm not proud of it but it achieved its purpose so why does it matter? I still find myself falling into my own trap but I am getting better now that I've unstuck myself from this mindset (which I have a horrible habit of getting into).

If you happen to have this issue which some of you may do (or I just might be a strange person for doing this to myself) I hope this helps change your way of thinking, as obviously you never see your favourite artist's "behind the scenes" you only see their polished, finished best work, not their own personal studies.. Kinda like seeing an un-airbrushed model with spots or blemishes/looking human (strange comparison? It makes sense to me anyway)

But yeah, I hope this helps, feel free to leave comments/feedback! If you like what I'm doing I'll try to make more posts like this and expose my own behind the scenes studies :)

Thanks for reading! (If you got this far!)