Doing the Push-Ups.
A fitness metaphor, but applies to everything you do.
I was taking a class on typography, when the instructor, in a very brief segment, said this:
If you want to get good, you have to do the push-ups.”
I didn’t clearly understand the fitness metaphor instantly, but as I let it sink in, it all came to me. All he was saying was:
Sharpen your sword before going to battle; Get really good with the basics.
Now the basics in Art is what some artists call “Innate Practice”. This is something boring you have to do before you get to the actual creation process. Like “Jacket-Off-Jacket-On” Training in The Karate Kid. You have to build a strong foundation of the basics if you want to get good with the more complex stuff.
Its simple. If you want to get good at art, learn how to draw perfect circles, cubes, boxes, triangles, cyllinders, and what not, free-hand or with tools. But you need to be good. Keeping in mind that there is always room for improvement, you strive for perfection.
If you want to be a body-builder, you have to do pushups, pull-ups, squats, sit-ups and stretching, to a point where it’s all second nature to you. This isn’t the cool stuff like barbell curls and bench presses, but it is the essential part. It is the part that builds up to everything else.
Any field in the world has some or the other basic prerequisite skill-set that you would have to master as a foundation that would make you build the more complex and challenging skills.
Sometimes it feels like its not real work, or the “real deal”. But it is more important than you think. It creates the conditioning and the preparation you need, the reflexes you need to develop in order to go ahead and do the “actual job”. You can only be the best when you have a well built foundation.
