Vanilla Beans: The Unexpected Twist

Aug 16

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We’ve been discussing the skill-loss which happens when we go weeks or months without coloring—

But I’ve been avoiding the most unfair part of this topic. Are you ready for it?

When we take time off, your backslide will be greater than mine.

And it’ll take you longer to recover.

Same vacation, same length of time, same massive pile of laundry when we get back…

But you’re the bigger loser.

Let’s look at why.

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THE UNEXPECTED TWIST

I know… some of you read that introduction and thought:

Duh! Amy’s got ninja art skills meanwhile I’m barely getting by. Of course she can serve time in a Mexican prison and still color something amazing!

Not to brag, but you’re not wrong. If we make a list of all my skills and all of yours, my list is longer and my skills run deeper. If you do this stuff for 30 years, you’ll have a long list too.

But mad skillz are not why I can hop off a plane and teach an advanced realism class in Baggage Pickup.

The reason your loss is greater than mine?

It’s because I don’t care.

Yes, you read that correctly:

I don’t care.

If we’re snoozing on a beach in Ibeza for a month, I’m losing all the same skills as you. We’ll both struggle to blend. Our flicks will be all over the map. And knowing me, I’ll be coloring like a kindergartener, completely unable to stay inside the lines.

It’ll take me at least a week to recover the easy-peasy basic skills I teach to beginners.

But I don’t care.

Because the skills that faded away while I was gone?

I don’t need them.

Hang on, you made us spend weeks learning a perfect flick stroke and months practicing smooth blends but you don’t use these techniques?

I do use them, but not like you use ‘em.

See, when I sit down to color, I don’t think about technique. I might flick but then again, I might not. And if you’ve watched my live classes— you know how often I forcefully remind myself to lambswool. Stop scribbling, Amy. Students are watching…

I spend a lot of time teaching skills I don’t care about.

Which is why when I temporarily lose these skills, it’s no big deal.

I don’t think about coloring as I’m coloring. In fact, if I force myself to think about coloring, I color worse.

Why waste time analyzing whether to give a bad blend more ink? In a few minutes, I’ll be dotting, swishing, or scumbling some kind of texture on top.

Who cares what the blend looks like?

The blend isn’t the point. It’s more important to accurately capture the form, with all its lights and darks, depth and dimension, texture and color.

If I can’t blend well today, tomorrow, or even the next day, it’s no big deal.

Vacations hit you harder because blending is the only thing you do.

The unexpected twist to advanced coloring—

And really, this is true in every art medium. My advanced students will back me up on this even though some of them never bothered to think about it until reading this now.

The deeper you study an art form, the less important core techniques become.

As a beginner, you’re 100% devoted to blending. It’s all you think about. Some people blend with a beginner’s obsession for years, some colorists obsess like a beginner forever. Blend, blend, blend.

But once you move into intermediate and advanced levels of coloring, the idea of blending just kinda fades away.

Flick strokes, schmickstrokes.

It’s not that technique isn’t important, it’s that perfect technique is no longer the goal.

A realistic ice cream cone becomes more important than a perfectly blended cone.

As I write this, it’s been two weeks since I picked up a marker.

And I’m about to go on vacation, so it’ll be a few weeks more until I’m back in coloring mode.

My skills will be rusty as heck, but it’ll be easier for me to get back into the swing of things because my eyes are on a different prize. I’ve learned how to color with depth and dimension, even when my blends are pure rubbish.

Realism is not contingent upon perfect application techniques.

I can muddle through just fine until my skills return.

Can you?

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Pssttt… some of you missed something yesterday…

CREAMY-DREAMY COLORS

Do your pastels look boring?

Or do you wonder where your pastels went?

It’s so weird! I used pale pink and mint markers, so why does it look red and green?

Ice Cream Twist answers one of the most common problems in hobby coloring— how to shade and develop dimension without going overboard with the dark colors.