Learning to Paint is Learning to See

We often struggle with execution—getting anatomical proportions right, refining colour tones, and shaping shadows. But is that really the core issue in our artistic self-discovery? Perhaps the real challenge is seeing the underlying structure that reality shares with our technique—how we break down what we observe into fundamental elements and then reconstruct it with our skills.

For example, when I look at a reference, I’m reading its structure through a visual language I’ve learned: line art (shape), base colours, and values. This is, of course, an oversimplification of a much deeper mental process, but it helps make vision—or the understanding of a subject—digestible. I see this as a natural consequence of learning a structured approach to execution in art.

How does one improve this? First, I believe one must refine their language—whether it’s self-developed or learned from others. What do I mean by language? Essentially, it’s the set of steps you use to recreate reality through technique and fundamentals. The clearer this language is to you, the better you’ll be at reading and seeing the world in front of you—allowing you to paint it in your mind before ever touching the canvas.

A more detailed instruction of this approach would be to take your time drawing the same subject for a while, like a nose. After a while, your perception of the nose will increase simply because you are paying more attention to something irrelevant in your daily life. This attention, combined with the constructive path you have developed using lines over days of drawing, will not only help you understand the reality of the nose but also to communicate that reality. You are not just drawing but seeing.

Sometimes, strokes feel like words one must learn to describe the world in one's own way.

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Here are the references I used for today's practice posts:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/369365606965841527/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/369365606965852319/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/369365606965852318/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/369365606965853953/

I've been thinking about giving proper credit to the pictures using Pinterest and Google Lens, but unfortunately, I'm not very effective at finding the source material. Nevertheless, I'll pay more attention to it.