Have you ever looked at one of your paintings or drawings and thought, Why am I not better at this by now? Maybe you’ve been practicing consistently. You’ve watched tutorials, learned new techniques, bought enough art supplies to open a small store, and you KNOW more than you did a few years ago. So why does it sometimes feel like your art is getting worse instead of better?
Here’s the weird thing: that feeling can actually be a sign that you’re improving.
Your Eyes May Be Improving Faster Than Your Hands
One of the biggest changes that happens as you become a better artist has nothing to do with how well you can physically draw or paint. You get better at seeing.
When you’re first learning, you may look at your drawing and think it looks pretty good because you simply don’t see all of the little problems yet. As you gain experience, you start noticing things you couldn’t see before. That eye is slightly too high. The values aren’t strong enough. That edge should be softer. The perspective is off. The color temperature isn’t working.
Suddenly you can see ALL THE THINGS.
This can be incredibly frustrating because your artistic eye sometimes develops faster than your ability to execute what you’re seeing. But think about what that actually means. If you can recognize what’s wrong, you’ve learned something. You can’t fix a problem you can’t see.
You’re Comparing Your Art to the Wrong Thing
When we finish a painting, we usually compare it to the image we had in our heads. Unfortunately, the imaginary version is always fantastic. Instead, try comparing your artwork to something you created one, three, or five years ago. That’s often when your improvement becomes much more obvious.
Pull out some of your older work and really look at it. What would you do differently today? What problems can you immediately identify? What techniques do you know now that you didn’t know then?
If you can look at an older piece and immediately see how you would improve it, that’s evidence of growth, even if your current painting is making you want to throw your pencils across the room.
You’re Probably Taking Your Skills for Granted
There are things you do automatically now that once required a ridiculous amount of concentration. Maybe you can blend colored pencils smoothly without really thinking about it. You understand that pushing harder isn’t always the solution. You know when you need a harder or softer edge, you can recognize when your values aren’t strong enough, or you know how to correct a color that isn’t quite right.
Those things don’t feel impressive anymore because they’ve become normal to you.
Think back to when you were first learning. How many of the decisions you make automatically today would have completely confused you then? We have a tendency to stop giving ourselves credit for a skill as soon as that skill becomes easy. But easy now doesn’t mean it was always easy.
Those skills count.
Being Able to Fix Mistakes Is a Skill
Artists often think being “good” means not making mistakes. It doesn’t. Experienced artists make mistakes constantly. The difference is that they’ve gotten better at recognizing those mistakes and figuring out what to do next.
Maybe your initial drawing was wrong, so you corrected it. Maybe your painting looked flat, so you strengthened the values. Maybe you overworked an area, so you simplified it. Maybe your subject wasn’t standing out, so you adjusted the background.
We tend to remember the part where we messed up and completely ignore the fact that we knew how to fix it. Problem-solving is a huge part of becoming a better artist. Being able to look at something that isn’t working, figure out why it isn’t working, and make a correction is a skill worth giving yourself credit for.
Stop Judging Your Artwork From Six Inches Away
Artists have a special talent for finding flaws nobody else would ever notice. We’ll spend ten hours working on something and then stare at one tiny section thinking, That transition right there is HORRIBLE.
Meanwhile, someone looking at the finished painting from a normal distance has absolutely no idea what we’re talking about.
Remember to step away from your artwork. Put it across the room. Look at it in a mirror. Take a photo of it. Come back tomorrow. Your artwork is meant to be viewed as a whole, not inspected one pencil stroke at a time with your nose six inches from the paper.
Of course we want to correct problems when we see them, but there comes a point when we’re no longer evaluating the artwork the way an actual viewer will experience it. We’re hunting for flaws.
Stop Comparing Your Messy Middle to Someone Else’s Finished Artwork
You’re halfway through a drawing. The background isn’t finished, half the values are missing, the colors aren’t balanced yet, and your subject looks a little questionable. Then you open social media and see another artist’s gorgeous finished painting.
Naturally, your brain decides, Well. Clearly I suck.
Except you’re comparing your unfinished work to someone else’s finished, photographed, carefully presented artwork. That’s not exactly a fair comparison.
You’re also not seeing all of their ugly stages, failed attempts, corrections, abandoned paintings, and questionable decisions that happened before that finished piece appeared online. You’re seeing the result, not everything it took to get there.
The Ugly Stage Is Normal
Almost every painting or drawing goes through a stage where you wonder whether you’ve made a terrible mistake. Sometimes several stages.
Things aren’t fully rendered yet. Values haven’t been pushed far enough. Colors haven’t been balanced. Details are missing. One area might be nearly finished while everything around it is still in its awkward beginning stages. It can look AWFUL.
That doesn’t necessarily mean anything has gone wrong.
Learning to continue working through that stage instead of immediately deciding you’ve failed is an important skill by itself. I’ve seen so many artists give up on work that wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t finished.
Give the piece a chance to get where you’re trying to take it before deciding it isn’t working.
Your Standards Are Getting Higher
Here’s another unfair part of improving at art: the better you become, the better you want to become.
Your definition of “good” keeps moving. Years ago, you may have been thrilled just to draw something that looked recognizable. Then you wanted better proportions. Then better shading. Then more realistic textures. Then better lighting, more interesting compositions, stronger color, better edges, more detail…and on and on it goes.
You keep moving the finish line.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Higher standards can push us to improve. The problem comes when you forget to look behind you and see how far you’ve already traveled. If the only thing you’re measuring is the distance between where you are and where you want to be, you’re going to completely miss the enormous distance you’ve already covered.
Struggling Doesn’t Mean You’re Bad at Art
I think we sometimes imagine that really good artists sit down at the easel knowing exactly what they’re doing from beginning to end. They choose all the right colors, every brushstroke goes exactly where it should, and everything works beautifully on the first try.
Nope.
Sometimes things don’t work. Sometimes you make a bad decision. Sometimes you stare at the painting trying to figure out why something feels wrong. Sometimes you need to repaint an area or erase something and draw it again.
Experience doesn’t eliminate those moments. What experience gives you is a bigger toolbox for dealing with them.
Being good at art doesn’t mean you never struggle. It means you’re getting better at knowing what to do when you do.
You May Be Better at Art Than You Think
None of this means you need to convince yourself that every painting you make is amazing. Some won’t be. You also don’t need to ignore mistakes or stop trying to improve. In fact, recognizing those mistakes is one of the things that allows you to improve.
The problem is when we use our ability to see those mistakes as evidence that we’re bad artists instead of recognizing that the ability to see them is part of becoming a better artist.
So the next time you look at your artwork and think, Why can I suddenly see so many things wrong with this? remember that those problems may not have suddenly appeared. Maybe you’re finally skilled enough to see them.
Instead of only asking yourself, What’s wrong with this painting? ask yourself another question too:
What can I do now that I couldn’t do a year ago?
Pull out some old artwork if you need proof. Look at what you struggled with then. Look at the decisions you can make now without even thinking about them. Look at the problems you can identify and correct today that you wouldn’t have even noticed before.
You might be a lot better at art than you think.