Tag: improve

The Value of REPETITION in PAINTING – Improve Fast & Efficiently | Liron’s Podcast Episode 72

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In this episode I’m talking about repetition – a valuable exercise for improving your drawing and painting skills FAST and EFFICIENTLY.

Table of Contents

1. Repetition in Painting and Drawing
2. Worse 2nd Attempt
3. Internalize
4. Loosen Up
5. Recognizing Recurring Mistakes
6. Conclusion

1. Repetition in Painting and Drawing

Repetition is a great tool for improving. It involves painting or drawing the same subject several times.

This allows for more focused learning, and unlocks some obvious (and less obvious) benefits.

2. Worse 2nd Attempt

Surprisingly enough, you may find that in your repeated efforts you actually do worse.

That’s to be expected.

The 2nd time around, working on the same subject, you lack that same spontaneity that characterized the first version.

You may also have some “arrogance” (very natural, not blaming you (;), and a feeling you “already know” the subject.

Don’t let that deter you from doing this. Even when you don’t notice, you are learning and improving.

3. Internalize

Drawing the same subject / scene several times, allows you to internalize a part of the process, and focus on a different one.

As mentioned, you may find some of your result to be worse, but other aspects may be better.

So take the good with the bad. 

Whenever you try an “extreme” technique, it tends to be accompanied by some growing pains.

Whenever I have a streak of great paintings – I am happy, but also weary of the fact it means I may not be growing.

4. Loosen Up

One side-effect of repetition, that is barely discussed, is how it sets you free and helps you loosen up.

Doing something a second time, and DELIBERATELY at that, makes you less worried about the end result. You can just paint yet ANOTHER version!

This freedom helps you loosen up without you even noticing. And it will show in some of the later attempts.

That’s especially true if you are as impatient as I am. The fear of boredom in the 2nd and 3rd iterations actually motivates me to try something different!

5. Recognizing Recurring Mistakes

That’s really the gist of this exercise. Doing repetitions of the same subject will bring to surface recurring mistakes that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

And that’s probably the biggest benefit of doing this.

6. Conclusion

I hope this episode encourages you to give this exercise a try.

And by the way, creating a small preparatory painting for a larger piece, or even just a preparatory sketch – are also a form of repetition.

It’s up to you to decide just “how much” repetition you are interested in doing.

And with that, let’s move onto the artist corner!

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Samuel Colman, an English painter. He lived from 1780-1845, and painted mostly portraits and landscapes.

His landscapes are what really grabbed me about his art. It’s rooted in realism, with an added layer of surrealistic atmosphere

You can check out some of his works here: Samuel Colman. I also recommend doing a Google Images search.

And Here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

— Liron

Improve Your Art INSTANTLY With FOCUS | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 64

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Today I’m going to show how to IMMEDIATELY improve your artistic results, without improving your actual skills.

This is aimed at visual artists mainly, and is probably relevant to any type of medium (watercolor, oils, acrylics, pastels, pen and ink – you name it!)

Spontaneity VS Planning

In the past I talked a lot about spontaneity, fun, looseness and allowing your instincts guide you.

To balance this out, today we’ll consider a more deliberate, planned approach.

No one method is the holy grail of anything. Doing BOTH is where the magic happens.

Highly-Detailed Painting

The thing that made me think more about this process, is this painting…

This painting “forced” me to slow down, consider my steps and become more patient.

And it taught me a lot.

I completely outdid myself, and it’s not necessarily thanks to an improvement in my skills, but rather thanks to the process I went through.

So let’s talk about some of the things that will help you improve your results immediately.

Improve Your Art With PLANNING

The first thing I would say is responsible to the improved result is me properly planning the painting.

I did several preparatory sketches in pencil. Some of the entire scene and composition, and others focusing on specific areas and details.

Here are some of those…

The main goal with these sketches is to familiarize myself with the scene, both on a macro level (overall composition), and on a micro level (details).

Focus & Slowing Down

That’s another thing I learned.

You want to deliberately slow down and work patiently. This also involved taking breaks whenever I feel like I’m getting impatient.

As soon as I felt like I was “trying to get to the end result”, rather than enjoy the process and be fully immersed in it – I took a break.

This proved to be very useful, and I kept my energy, motivation and creativity levels high throughout the whole thing.

And by the way, here are some stages from the start of the process until the end of it.

Deliberate Decisions

When painting it’s easy to get into auto-pilot mode.

Doing things on auto-pilot is useful. It’s essentially delegation of some actions to a lower-level element, to save resources.

Muscle memory can play a part in that.

But for some parts of the painting process, you want to be more present and deliberate.

So ask yourself – did I do this brush stroke out of habit and without thought, hoping for the best?

Or am I present to the moment, and doing things in a calculated manner?

If you are always hoping for the best, you may not achieve the result you want.

Last Tip – Scaling

When attempting to create an artwork that’s much LARGER than you are used to, I recommend scaling slowly and gradually.

Larger artworks, especially representational / realistic ones, will require more details as they scale up.

Sometimes it’s hard making the jump from a tiny thumbnail painting to a full sized one (the other way around is also true!).

So do it gradually.

Create a small thumbnail. Then double the size and make a slightly larger painting. Then double it again and do an A4 size. The again, until you are at the scale you are interested in.

This may seem a little redundant, but if you are planning a piece that will take a long time to finish, and you have that time, and you want it to be perfect (let’s say it’s a complex commission work) – this is a very useful process to follow.

And with that – we are ready to look at today’s artist!

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Yuko Nagayama, a Japanese artist.

Here work is so visually pleasing. She uses different subjects to symbolize different ideas and concepts.

She has a lot of florals, and what I especially love about them is that she is using so many colors as well, which reminds me of the way I tend to do portraits.

You can check out a lot of here work here, or by searching google images (;

And Here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

Freedom in Painting – My Biggest Personal Artistic Insight | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 59

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Today I want to tell you about my biggest personal artistic insight, regarding freedom and patience in painting (and creating in general).

Freedom & Patience

A few weeks ago I sat down with one of my best friends to do our yearly plans for 2019.

We don’t do resolutions, we do actual detailed and elaborate plans. The conversation we had led me to realize there’s one thing that’s really missing in my artistic life at the moment.

And seeing as art is about 85% of my life at the moment… that’s a major problem.

What’s missing is real freedom and patience when creating.

Goal-Oriented Me

So i’m very goal oriented.

This led me to always limit my creation time (painting, sketching etc.). After all, it’s only one of my many daily tasks.

The problem is – I wasn’t allowing myself enough time to really experiment. To create with freedom, patience. Deliberate experimentation is something that was really missing.

I was missing my artistic freedom.

Freedom & Experimentation

What I want to be able to do is go on side-tangents when creating.

Maybe I’ll be working on a finished painting, and I’m about to paint a person. I’d like to have the freedom to pause, take out a piece of test paper and jot down multiple sketches and paintings of the person I’m about to paint.

Maybe I’d like to try out different ways of painting them. Wet-in-wet, wet on dry, dry brush, etc.

But I wasn’t allowing myself to do that, as I am always aware of my time constraints. And I have tons of other stuff to do. Work on content, work on my sales funnel, the Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, Instagram stories and… a barrage of other things.

Freedom as a Major Goal For 2019

I realized that I’ll have to force myself to do this. To give myself permission to have more freedom. To experiment more freely.

And so I decided to mark that as one of my main focuses for 2019.

I want to do “quarantined” creation days, in which my only “obligation” is to paint, sketch and experiment.

I want to reach that all-time level of art, and become one of the biggest artists of our time (and perhaps not just our time).

To get there, I will have to give myself permission to do this.

What would it look like if it was easy / fun?

This is an idea I’ve been toying around with lately, when things like that challenge me. I got this from Tim Ferris’s video on asking questions better.

Whenever something like this poses a challenge for me, I ask myself: What would this look like if it was easy? Or fun?

This is something I’m still contending with, but it does help from time to time.

Conclusion

And this is it for this episode! I hope this encourages / entertains you in some way. I feel like this idea of complete freedom will allow me to reach that crazy level I’m after.

And I’m not afraid of “too much” freedom. As it turns out, I’m pretty good at being disciplined haha. It’s the opposite direction in which I need to balance myself.

So with that being said, let’s move onto the Artist Corner!

Artist Corner

Today we talked about Anastasia Kustove, a fantastic watercolor painter I recently discovered on Instagram. You can check out her work @Kustova_Anastasia.

She mostly paints views and people. Her style is fantastic, and I’ve been really enjoying seeing it develop over the last year.

I especially love seeing pictures of her work on-location, such as this one.

And this is it for today!

Here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

How Realistically Should you Draw and Paint? | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 57

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Hi there, Liron here, and today I want to address an issue I’ve been asked about a lot lately.

How Realistically Should You Paint or Draw?

I seem to be getting a lot of questions like “How realistically should I paint?” or “Should I change what I see or try to stick to the reference?”.

And all of these questions are a “how” types of questions. In order to answer them, we need to move into a higher plain of thought.

We need to answer the WHAT question (and perhaps also the “why” question).

What do You Want?

The bottom line is this – what kind of art do YOU want  to make? What kind of artwork inspires you and makes you full of joy?

Whatever that is – go do that (:

That’s my simple answer for you. If you understand what you want, and perhaps why you want that – the “how” will take care of itself. It will merely be a manifestation of what you want.

And with that being said… artist corner!

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Amanda Hyatt.

Amanda’s a fantastic impressionist watercolor painter. She cranks up the impressionism, while – from afar – not losing that beautiful realistic feeling I love so much!

Her style actually reminds me of the classic English OIL painters, despite her working in watercolor, which is quite surprising!

I discovered her through a YouTube video, and highly recommend you check it out, as well as the rest of her work.

YouTube videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ1Q9SP99rE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4jScO-4vvw

Amanda’s website:
https://amandahyatt.com.au/

And here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

My 2019 Goals as an Artist | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 55

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Hi there, Liron here! Today I want to talk to you about my 2019 goals as an artist (and perhaps as a person in general!).

First off – I wanted to wish you a fantastic 2019. I hope you achieve anything you set out to. Also wishing you lots of health and happiness.

So now – let’s get started!

My 2019 goals are divided into to groups – big goals and small goals.

Big 2019 Goals

These are main, essential goals that encompass my long term vision.

1. To reach a “Godlike” level of creation.

That was the best way I found to phrase it. I want to create are that contains shards of divinity, perfection and the ideal.

In other words – I realized how important it was for me to improve my creative skills. This poses a challenge – how can I work even harder on my skills, and still be fully productive in all the other areas.

I still cannot answer that question fully. But what I do know is that this one is very important to me.

2. Complete control of my personal and business finances.

I say personal AND business, but I’m aware that the focus really is on the personal. In 2018 I created a lot of order and organization in how I manage my finances, and a part of it is getting a firm to do that for me (;

But now I want to be more in control of how much I’m actually spending, in relations to my expenses.

This is mainly so that I can save and invest for the future.

3. Share my knowledge and create a legacy.

This is a direct continuation of what I’ve been doing in the past 2 years. Only now I know exactly how to phrase it.

This is basically publishing tons of content online.

This year, however, I’ll start being more active on LinkedIn, and also get back to Pinterest, which I completely abandoned for the last two years.

There are also some other platforms I’m planning on putting more emphasis on, and I generally want to DO MORE everywhere.

Small 2019 Goals

These are smaller goals that are still important for me.

1. Become a YouTube master.

This means improving my content significantly, and becoming one of the best channels out there.

2. LinkedIn.

Already mentioned previously. But it was still important for me to write this one separately. LinkedIn has more meaning to me than just another social platform. This is a symbol of me starting to take my personal brand in a more business-related direction, and not just are.

3. Taking the interactions with my audience to a face-to-face level.

This means giving lectures and doing talks and keynotes. This will require some serious work on my part. We’ll see how it goes! (:

4. Nurturing and deepening relationships with my friends and family.

Working so hard for the past several years, I’ve always tried to ensure I balance my work with my personal relationships. This year I want to also make sure I continue developing those.

Better Way to Phrase my Vision

These goals aren’t that different from what I’ve been doing.

But I do thing they are more accurately phrased to match my long term vision. And that’s important.

The more they match it, the easier it will be for me to see the connection, and work towards them with stronger motivation.

And the workload is coming.

I started writing everything down today, and breaking down the goals into tasks. It’s remarkable how much work I’m going to have this year.

But I’m ready for it!

And now we are also ready for the artist corner.

Artist Corner

Today I talked about a Spanish artist named Manel Plana.

Manel is a watercolor painter. I was recommended to check out his work by a follower on YouTube, and boy – is he amazing!

Manel has this very loose, almost abstract impressionistic style. But it’s SO REALISTIC when you take a few steps back!

I highly recommend you check out his work on his website (he has quite an active blog, it seems!): Manel Plana

And here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron