Life-long Learning.

I've been sketching in my local area every day for more than a couple of months, and, to be honest, I had expected to see faster progress in my technique. What has happened hasn't quite happened in the way I thought it would. However, the benefits seem to be spilling over most unpredictably.

(you can see my sketches here)

Typically when you practice a skill, because that's all sketching is, you expect to see your competence and speed increase to the extent that it should become effortless. In reality, it has become harder and a little more intense. Rather than speeding up and hardly thinking about what I'm doing, I find that I'm slowing down and becoming far more involved in the moment. There is more pleasure, mostly in focus and concentration, but there is also a growing self-criticism of the quality.

Apart from drawing what has happened, my levels of sustained concentration on other things have improved and the pleasure in looking at something with a purpose—the purpose of constantly looking at things and seeing a little more and a little differently from previously.

There are three main objectives in sketching every day. 1. To improve my skill level. 2. To improve my ability to "see" things rather than just look at them (for that, I think you need a purpose or reason) 3. To try to be able to switch on that elusive "flow" state at will. However, there is another fringe benefit, and that's the purpose of this blog. Life-Long-Learning.

I believe deeply that we all have the potential to continue learning throughout our lives. I don't believe that you reach the age of 25, and it's all downhill from there. I think, and fortunately, recent research and science back me on this, that we are perfectly capable of learning new things throughout the whole of our lives, so why does it feel so difficult as you get older?

Being a beginner.

We start life by learning. We learn to walk, talk, to interact with other people. When we're starting out, there isn't a time when we learn to walk, fall over, and say to ourselves, "well, I guess I'll never get this", and give up. We persist, and we accomplish a level of competence. We learn the rules of our environment and society, and we adopt them and then most of us plateau when we have sufficient skill to exist.

We seem to forget how to be a beginner, yet we do take in new information every moment of every day (unless you live in an isolation cell). We overlay what we have learnt and adopted and assume that this is how the world behaves. Our assumptions and beliefs assist us in predicting what will happen next, but at the same time, because they want to save you mental energy, they hinder the effort of taking on board new things or challenging those assumptions.

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up".
Picasso

It's the same when many people approach drawing. Their first reaction is that they weren't born with the talent or simply don't have any talent for drawing. When they do sit down to sketch, they more often than not (I know this because I also do it) will draw what they think they know rather than what they see.

Procedural Knowledge.

One of the most effective ways we learn things is by something called Procedural knowledge. This is the knowledge we gain by actually doing something rather than learning something from a book. Doing things. We all know how difficult it is to learn things in theory against learning in practice.

We are better at this when we are children; procedural knowledge does decline with age. This is why it's better, in the case of drawing, to draw from life. The physical act of translating from eye to hand better records the learning. It may be possible to learn to drive, for instance, in theory, but the reality will prove different. Learning a new computer program is far easier when you use the program than merely studying it.

Part of this is to do with the fact that children see the world with fresh eyes and have fewer assumptions to fall back on. Society doesn't expect a child to be an expert. We are more likely to learn new skills as children for this reason.

Another reason is the fear of failure. Learning is undoubtedly better if you fail and use that failure to learn than if you cowed away from failure and didn't even attempt the learning task. In fact, if you didn't even try the task, you would have failed by default.

A seven-year-old will indeed have 30% more new neurons available than an adult. However, new neurons are being produced throughout our lives in a process called neurogenesis. What we can do as adults is to optimise the conditions that generate and uses new neurons. As adults, our brains remain relatively plastic, i.e. with the ability to learn and adapt.

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that we can all improve our mental health and cognitive skills by engaging in learning music and drawing, and painting. The hurdle to overcome is our belief that we can't do something and would be better off not even trying.

Practical skills and assumptions.

Sketching is a practical skill like driving a car. Of course, we can't reach the level of Lewis Hamilton, but we can learn the basic skill.

I have a friend who regularly races classic cars (he only started racing in his late 50's). I thought I was a pretty good driver until I got in the car with him around a track. There will always be higher levels of skill combined with talent.

As with drawing and painting, the setback is that we make assumptions about what a drawing or painting should look like or assumptions about our skill level, and we retreat from taking part. We assume we know how something should look rather than actually looking (and potentially failing).

The Dreyfus model.

In 1980 Stuart and Herbert Dreyfus of the University of California conducted several studies to understand how adults learn new skills. They studied a whole range of people, from pilots to chess players. They suggested that learning is acquired in five stages;

1. Novice

2. Advanced beginner

3. Competence

4. Proficiency

5. Expertise.

NOVICE.

When we begin to learn something, we are initially a novice. We need to get the basic rules right, and then we can apply them. If we were learning chess, this would mean understanding the basic moves of each piece. On paper, chess moves for different pieces are relatively straightforward and easy to learn, and this gives us a novice level of learning. However, playing chess against an opponent involves a great deal more than just knowing the moves.

ADVANCED BEGINNER.

Using new skills in a complex and messy world involves taking learning to a higher level. In our chess example, this may mean being able to play against an opponent and understanding the consequence of their move and realise how to react.

Perhaps a more straightforward example may be learning a language. Before we are even a novice, we cannot hear the difference between one word and another and cannot find meaning in what is being said or read. When learning a new language, we make quick progress learning vocabulary and grammar. Still, when you speak with a native speaker, you realise that the exceptions and irregularities will also need to be mastered if you are to get to a level of understanding. This is where many people get frustrated by their lack of progress and give up.

Skills become truly useful if they can be applied almost unconsciously and automatically. Then you can ditch the effort of concentration and move to the next level. You have to become unaware of the technicalities. As with my friend's example, the classic car racer, he will be reacting automatically to a constantly changing scenario. He will be acting on "autopilot". To master a skill, it must become automatic.

When my son was much smaller, I took him to a mind-mapping day session run by Tony Buzan. One of the skills they taught, as a distraction, was juggling. Juggling, to a competent level, is a skill that anyone can learn with practice. It requires a level of motor skills and coordination and minimal cognitive skills. Those who found the juggling most difficult (especially the parents) were overthinking the juggling. Over-thinking is a barrier to learning a new skill.

People try to be "conscious" of every movement, which overwhelms the brain (the conscious brain is very slow compared to the unconscious, automatic brain). Once you have learnt the basics of juggling, it becomes automatic, and this frees the mind to focus on the overall pattern.

We learn best by combining observation with doing rather than simply getting instruction. In a recent experiment, people were separated into two groups; one was given only instructional information, and the other group were shown the task by practitioners. As you might suspect, what they found is that the group who observed the task were far more competent at reproducing it than the group that had only learned by instruction. Watching encourages neurological connections, partly because of empathy with the performer and because our brains have something called "mirror neurons" that connect with other people and their emotions (if we see a child catch their finger in a door, we wince too).

SHOULDN'T ADULTS BE BETTER AT LEARNING?

You would have thought that adults, who have acquired far finer motor skills and knowledge, would or should be able to learn more efficiently and faster, but this is not the case. As adults, our assumptions hold us back.

This is beautifully shown in Betty Edwards book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain; she asked a group of adults to copy a figure drawing of Igor Stravinsky by Picasso. The initial results were strangely distorted and clumsy. When the drawing is turned upside down, the results were astonishing. People suddenly looked at shape, negative spaces and relationships, rather than what they thought they knew. This exercise is highly effective, and I would recommend anyone to try it!

Picasso sketch of Igor Stravinski (upside-down)

The point is that it's never too late to learn something new or to hone a skill. In fact, there is an enormous benefit, not just for the new knowledge or skill you have learnt, but also for mental health. Learning keeps your brain alert. New skills help you see the world in a new and different light.

It's even worth learning something pointless because it won't be pointless. Life-long learning should become a lifestyle choice.

"It takes a whole life to learn how to live."
Seneca

If anyone wants to join me and share my 30-day sketching challenge get in touch: charles@charlesleon.uk.

All my sketches can be view at www.charlesleon.uk/sketching