Hand Skill and Eye skill

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Everything below represents notes for Sepha to finish the YouTube vid and article with.

Have you noticed that you're never happy with anything you make? Or maybe you know something is "off" but not quite why? Or that you have a clarity of idea that you simply can't physically make - if only you knew the secret techniques!

As artists, we have two intangible skills that we need to develop, colloquially reffered to as your Hand skill and your Eye skill.

Hand Skill

Your hand skill is your physical, literal, technical ability and technical knowhow that you use to actually MAKE your art work. For a painter, its how their hand grips the brush, how they mix their colors, and how they prime their canvas. For the 3D artist, its knowledge of mesh integrity, topology, techniques, sculpt work, tips and tricks, etc.

Its very important, but very straight forward to learn and develop.

Eye Skill

Your Eye skill is your ability to see a form for what it truly is. To look at refrence, and accurately absorb it. To internalize not just what you see, but its function, its design. It sound silly, but its a real skill.

Masters of anatomy have impeccable eye skill because not only do they "see" the surface of the human face, but they also "see" the bones, tendons, fat etc that lives underneath it, and informs it shape.

I put "see" in quotes because only 50% of the skill is with your eyesight, the rest is with your minds eye, and your understanding.

Improving our Hand and Eye skill

To improve our hand skill, watch tutorials, read manuals and articles, experiment and tinker with the tools.

To improve our eye skill, we perform "Studys".

What is a Study

In this chapter, we're going to perform something called a Study.

A study is where you sit down and focus on creating something very specific, from reference. The goal here is to soak up as much about the object that you possibly can see.

It is very challenging, and very confronting - because you need to be comfortable with challenging the fact that you're not as good as you feel you either are, or could be. You need to push past that feeling of uncomfortability, and try to replicate the form of the work.