10 STEPS TO

BETTER ARTWORK

UR ART?
ITH YO
STUCKW
FEELING

Learn how to identify areas of improvement and 10

actionable steps to help improve your art skills fast.

BY KIRSTY PARTRIDGE
 CONTENTS
Your path to better artwork.............................3

Step 1: Setting art goals...................................4

Step 2: Identify areas of improvement.............6

Step 3: Accept critiques....................................7

Step 4: One problem at a time.........................9

Step 5: Eliminate bad habits............................9

Step 6: Learn from others...............................11

Step 7: Choosing references............................12

Step 8: Invest more time................................14

Step 9: Learn new techniques.........................14

Step 10: Always be a student.........................16

What next?.....................................................17

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 YOUR PATH TO BETTER ARTWORK
Right now you may be feeling unmotivated, defeated and ready to
give up on art. I understand! It can be frustrating to see no
progress, especially when you know you have been dedicating hours
to your craft.

Doubts may be filling your head.

'I'm just not good enough'

'I won't ever be able to draw like that'
'What am I doing wrong?'

But, you ARE good enough and you CAN reach your art goals. You
just need a new strategy! One that will break the cycle of bad
drawing after bad drawing. That is what this guide can do for you. It
will help you start to take control of your art journey and finally
see improvement in your artwork.

Now, these steps will only work if you approach them with the right
mindset. If you go into this still thinking that you can't do it, then
you probably won't. You need to believe that you can improve and
become the artist of your dreams.

You do not need to be 'born with a gift' to become a great artist.

Dedication and willingness to learn is enough. The fact that you
have downloaded this guide shows that you have the latter!

Dedication is the hardest but most crucial part of success. Yes, I will
teach you tricks to speed up the process of improving your skills but,
it will still take time and dedication to master your craft.

Let's get started!

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 STEP 1: WHAT ARE YOUR ART GOALS

You may have been told to set goals a million times

but, have you ever actually done it? I feel like setting
goals is something we all know is good to do but we
brush it off as not that important, something that can
wait until after we have binged our favourite show on
Netflix. We put it off, even though we know it’s good
for us.

But, I don’t want you to put it off any longer! Setting

goals is the first, most crucial step to success and
needs your attention. So, in case you were thinking of
skipping over this step I want to let you know why you
need to set art goals.

WHY SET ART GOALS?

Goals give you motivation. They help you focus on

where to direct your time and attention, in order to see
the most progress in your art. When you don’t set
goals you don’t know what you need to work on and
what is most important for you to achieve.

Vague goals like ‘ I want to improve my art’ can make

you become overwhelmed. It’s too broad and makes
you think ‘Where do I start?’ You can feel lost and
improving can feel impossible. Setting goals can take
that feeling away. Specific goals help give you a
starting point and actionable steps you can take to
improve your art. For example, ‘I want to improve my
art’ isn’t helpful. It’s too vague. But, ‘I want to improve
my proportions’ is something we can work with. That is
a goal we can easily act on.

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WHAT ART GOALS TO SET?

There are many types of art goals and they will be unique to each
artist. Think about what is important to you! What do you want to
achieve with your art? What do you want your art to look like? How
do you want it to be different? Your goals are personal to you.

Picture yourself as the successful artist you want to become. What

does that look like? And how is it different to reality? This will help
you ‘spot the difference’ and identify exactly what your goals could
be.

You can have artwork specific goals or art career goals. But, for this
guide we are going to focus on goals centered around improving
your artwork. Feel free to write down any other art goals you have
though!

EXAMPLES OF ART GOALS

Be able to create realistic drawings

Be able to paint in a loose style
Convey more emotion in my art
Render likeness in my portraits
Develop a unique art style
Be able to control my watercolours

The list is endless. Identify what your art goals are and then we can
figure out how to achieve them. Did you know that you are 40%
more likely to achieve your goals when you write them down! That’s
insane. It’s well worth taking a few minutes to write down your
goals, wouldn’t you agree?

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 STEP 2: YOUR AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT

It is time to identify what you need to do to achieve your art goals.

Gather together some of your art pieces and study them. Become
your own art critic. It is a very valuable skill to be able to look over
your finished art and pick out weaknesses and areas of
improvement. That is how you will grow as an artist.

You can’t improve your art if you finish a drawing, put it aside and
never take the time to reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly!

Once you have gathered together your artwork look to see if there
are any similarities you can spot that are stopping your artwork
looking how you want it to.

EXAMPLE

ART GOAL- I want to create hyper-realistic drawings.

Figure out what is stopping them from looking realistic now. This
will give you actionable things to work on.

Common areas of improvement:

Inaccurate sketch/ proportions

Inaccurate colour selection
Lack of depth/ contrast in the drawing, causing it to look flat.
The drawing looks ‘cartoony’ due to harsh outlining or flat
shading.
Lack of detail/ texture

As you can see the art goal is what we want to achieve and the
areas of improvement are what we need to fix in order to reach our
art goal.

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DO THE SAME WITH YOUR ART GOAL

Take your art goal and break down, by critiquing your work, what
you need to focus on improving in order to reach your goal.

Don’t forget to point out the good stuff too! We don’t want it all to
be doom and gloom. It is also very valuable to know what you are
doing well in your artwork. It is hard to stay motivated when you
only focus on the negative. There will be positive aspects of your
artwork too, so make sure you focus on identifying these things as
well! Try to write at least 3 things you love about your artwork.

STEP 3: ACCEPT CRITIQUES

We can all get defensive sometimes, especially when it comes to our

art. Accepting criticism can be hard but is vital if you want to speed
up your progress. I know I found it hard to take criticism when I
started drawing. But, once I saw the value in it I swallowed my
pride and now I welcome criticism with open arms.

WHY ACCEPT CRITIQUES?

We can’t always spot everything ourselves. When you have been

staring at the same drawing for hours on end you can develop
tunnel vision. You may find it hard to step back and analyse your
artwork and pick out its faults.

Asking someone else to look at your art and give you feedback can
give you information that you would never have seen on your own.
After all, 2 pairs of eyes are better than one! Try and get as many
people to critique your art as possible. This will help you gather lots
of tips on how to improve your art.

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Maybe you are struggling to pick out why your
art doesn’t look realistic. You have been staring
at your art for hours and just can’t figure out
what you're doing wrong. It’s likely that someone
else will come in and notice the problem straight
away. You could be drawing someone famous
and not know why the likeness is off. Instead of
wasting hours pulling your hair out over it, ask
someone to take a quick look. It’s likely that they
will look and be able to say straight away ‘his
nose looks too big’ or ‘the mouth doesn’t look
right.’

Critique doesn't just apply to art. It is always beneficial to get a

second opinion on any aspect of your life. I love asking my husband
for his feedback on my art, business ideas, or any projects I'm
working on. Like this guide! Get comfortable with getting other
people's opinions, as it can really help propel your success. Make
sure to tell people that you want their honest opinion.

NOTE: Family and friends typically don't want to hurt your feelings
and might just say 'it looks great!' So, make sure they know that you
need their honesty in order to improve.

Don't feel like you have to act on every opinion

you receive. It is important to ask for and process
people's critiques, but if you don't agree with
them then you don't need to take them on board.
Just make sure your rejection isn't coming from a
defensive place! The important thing is to gather
extra information through critiques and then you
can decide what to do with that information.

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 STEP 4: FOCUS ON ONE PROBLEM AT A TIME

By now you should have a list of things you want to improve on. It
can be tempting to want to work on all of these things all at once.
But, this isn’t a good idea!

It can be very overwhelming trying to fix everything at the same

time. It might even make you lose motivation with your drawing.
Instead, pick one thing that you want to improve on in your next
drawing and focus on that. Over time, you can tackle everything on
your list. 

For example, you may know that you need to improve your
proportions, values and blending. These are all massive tasks.
Imagine trying to fix all of those things at once. Talk about stress!
Instead, think 'Ok, I will work on my values in my next 5 drawings.'
Now that is a lot more doable. Once you have mastered that you
will feel more confident and be ready to tackle the next thing on
your list!

STEP 5: ELIMINATE BAD HABITS

Most of us have at least one bad drawing/ painting habit. Some are
minor and some are major. Major bad habits are the ones I want to
focus on. I classify these as any habit that is stopping you reaching
your art goal.

A bad drawing habit that I still have is resting my hand on my

paper. Now, this doesn't matter too much when using coloured
pencil, as it barely smudges. But, doing this when working with
charcoal or pastel leads to a big mess. Something that could easily
be avoided!

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If I focused on breaking this bad habit, or simply put a clear sheet of
paper under my wrist I could avoid this problem. This would
eliminate a source of stress whilst drawing and lead to a better
result (due to less smudging.)

Think about if there are any bad habits that you have adopted that
could be preventing you from improving your art. Some might be
able to be resolved with a simple fix!

The problem with bad habits is that they could be really holding
you back. There is a common saying that 'practice makes perfect.'
This is not the case if you are practising bad habits over and over
again. Instead, practice could be making permanent!

COMMON BAD HABITS & HOW TO FIX THEM

BAD HABIT HOW TO FIX IT

Pressing too hard on your pencil. Try holding your pencil further back
to reduce pencil pressure.

Drawing what you think you see,
rather than what is actually
there.
Outlining parts of your drawing.
Turn your reference upside down
and sketch it out that way instead.
Blend out harsh outlines and focus
on creating soft transitions between
values.

Painting new layers, without Wait for each layer of watercolour

waiting for previous layers to dry. to dry, before adding more paint.

Dedicate an equal amount of time

Rushing 'unimportant' parts of to each aspect of your drawing.
your artwork. Your background is just as
important as your focal point.

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 STEP 6: LEARN FROM OTHERS
The quickest way to improve your art is to learn from others. We are
very lucky to be able to learn anything we want from the internet. A
few searches on YouTube or Google and you can find countless
videos on how to draw and paint. You can practically find a tutorial
on any aspect of art that you want to learn about. For example, you
can find many tutorials on my YouTube channel!

The main reason why you are seeing slow growth in your art is
because you aren't utilising the content you have available to you. It
is hard to improve when you don't know what you're doing wrong.

You may have questions like 'why isn't this technique working?' or
''why does my shading look messy?' It is hard to figure these answers
out on your own. Normally, it is only when you see accomplished
artists using that same technique that you realise what you were
doing wrong.

Learning from others will help you improve a lot faster than
through trial and error on your own.

Take your list of areas of improvement (from step 2) and start

researching tutorials on those topics. Need to improve your
proportions? Look up some tutorials on it. Follow the advice given in
your next art piece and see if you start to see improvement.

TIP: Remember to focus on one problem at a time.

Watch tutorials on the thing you need to improve at and once you
have improved at it move onto the next area of improvement and
repeat!

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 STEP 7: CHOOSE BETTER REFERENCES
References are really useful when it comes to creating
art. They aren't just beneficial for realistic artwork
either! No matter your style you can utilise references to
better your art. You may choose to base a whole piece
of artwork on them or just use them as inspiration for
character poses. Either way, references should play a
part in your art.

However, not all photos make for good references. A

bad reference can actually set you up for a
disappointing piece of art.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD REFERENCE?

High quality photo. When you zoom in on the image

you want to be able to see lots of detail. A low
quality image makes for bad artwork. If your
reference lacks detail then you either can't include
detail in your drawing or have to make it up. This
leads to a more inaccurate drawing.

Good contrast. Want your drawing to stand out? That

is hard to do if your reference looks as flat as a
pancake! Make sure you pick a photo that contains a
range of values.

Good composition. Your artwork will look more

captivating if you pick a reference with an interesting
composition. For example, a side angle of a face may
be more exciting than a straight on shot. Also, look
out for photos that look 'weird.' For example, if the
arm in a pose reference has an unnatural placement
this may not translate into the best piece of art.

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 IMPROVING REFERENCES
Found that near perfect reference? There is no reason why
you can't improve a reference image to make it the best it
can be. I recommend using a photo editor to tweak your
reference and make it exactly how you want.

COMMON ADJUSTMENTS TO MAKE:

1. Contrast. Make your image pop even more by increasing

the contrast. This will give the image more depth.
2. Saturation. Is the image looking a bit dull? Increase the
vibrancy.
3. Brightness. Some references can be a bit dark. Easily fix
this by brightening it back up.
4. Black and white. Drawing in charcoal but have a
coloured reference? Turn the image to black and white
only. This makes it super easy to judge values!
5. Cropping. Crop your image to be the perfect ratio and
composition.

WHERE TO GET FREE REFERENCES

There are 3 websites I love for getting high quality, free
reference images:

Pexels
Pixabay
Unsplash

Images on these websites are royalty free, so you don't

have to worry about copyright!

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 STEP 8: INVEST MORE TIME INTO YOUR ART
A big reason your art isn't looking like you want it to is because you
aren't spending enough time on each art piece. You can quickly
improve your art just by doubling, or tripling the amount of time
you spend on the artwork.

The problem I see with many of my students artworks is that it just

doesn't look finished yet. Next time you think you have finished your
artwork go back in and spend another hour or more on it. Really try
to study your reference. Is there any extra details you could add?
Does your drawing have depth or require a few more shadows?

Don't be eager to call a drawing/ painting finished. Compare your

artwork to your reference, identify aspects that could be improved
and work on them. Critiquing isn't something that is just done after
you have finished a drawing. You should critique your work whilst
you are creating it. That way you can identify problems as you go
and fix them, giving you a much better final result.

Also, don't rush any aspect of your art. It is common to think of the
background as unimportant. This is not true! Every aspect is equally
important. Don't spend hours on the portrait to then only dedicate
10 minutes to the background. This will actually make the
background stick out like a sore thumb because it will be completed
to a subpar standard. You don't want to detract from the main focal
point, so ensure you draw everything to the same standard.

STEP 9: LEARN NEW TECHNIQUES

Learning new techniques is a great way to improve your art. Always
seek out new knowledge and aim to expand your arsenal of art
skills. It is great to improve by working on your weaknesses but, you
can also improve by learning completely new techniques.

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Learning new techniques can help you render your subject matter
more effectively. For example, learning new tips for layering
coloured pencils could help you draw fur more realistically.
Searching for new techniques can lead you to finding methods that
are much more efficient than the ones you currently use.

EXAMPLE

Fur can be challenging to draw with coloured pencils. There are

many different methods you can use to draw fur. Over time, I have
learnt many techniques and refined them to give me the best results
in my drawings.

I used to draw fur using the burnishing method. This is where you
use the pressure of your pencils to blend and layer the different
colours. This method was time consuming and often didn't give me
the desired result. It was hard to layer lighter colours over darker
tones, meaning I couldn't achieve a lot of detail in the fur.

By researching new techniques I learnt

about using solvent to blend coloured
pencils. This is a method that allows you
to build up lots of layers of coloured
pencils and even add lighter colours
over darker colours. This was a game
changer! Adding detail to fur became
easy.

Also, another technique I discovered was

the X-acto knife technique. This is where
you use a small crafting knife to scrape
away the top layer of coloured pencil,
revealing lighter layers underneath. This
is a great technique for achieving tiny
details and highlights in hair and fur.

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If I didn't seek out these new techniques I would be stuck using the
same, inefficient method. It would have been a lot harder to
improve my art this way. So, make sure you always seek out new
knowledge.

STEP 10: ALWAYS BE A STUDENT

You know the steps you need to take to start seeing improvement in
your art. However, it is important to always have a learners
mindset if you want to continue seeing progress for years to come.
We are never done learning. There is always something new to
learn.

When you shut yourself off to new knowledge you stop growing as
an artist and person.

There will never come a time when you know everything. No artist
ever does! You are on a journey, with no end destination. Once you
reach your art goals set new ones. Identify new areas of
improvement and repeat these 10 steps over and over again!

This is how you will continue to become a better and, eventually, a

GREAT artist!

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 WHAT NEXT?
We have established that improving your art without guidance is
very difficult. No guidance can lead to frustration and even make
you start to hate creating art!

Learning from other artists is one of the fastest ways to learn new
techniques, break bad habits and start seeing improvement in your
art. I can help you with that!

Over the last 2 years I have built up a library of over 300 real-time
art tutorials on my Patreon that will help you improve your art fast.

Patreon is a website that allows me to offer lots of tutorials for as

little as $5 per month.

WHAT DOES EACH TUTORIAL INCLUDE?

Real-time HD video tutorial with voice narration of my drawing/

painting process.
Reference image
Sketch outline
Materials list

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 EASY TO NAVIGATE
TUTORIALS

300 tutorials is a lot! That is why I

created a companion website to
my Patreon that easily lets you
browse all of the tutorials I have
on my Patreon, before becoming a
patron!

Click here to browse my tutorials!

WHAT MY PATRONS SAY

“I NEVER ever would have figured these skills out on my own. My

confidence in drawing portraits has increased so much and it is
FUN!”  Lisa Yoder, Patreon Member

“Kirsty has been my online teacher for less than a week and I've
already learned new techniques that make my membership fee more
than worth it! I can't believe that I'm getting so much for such a low
price.” Kathe Kline, Patreon Member

“I honestly don’t think my artwork would have improved if I didn’t

find Kirsty’s Patreon, as I would never have known any of the skills I
now know.” Chanelle Plant, Patreon Member

Click here to become a Patron and access over 300 art tutorials.

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