Deep practice examples ‘live’ from Da Vinci
What is deep practice?
Deep practice is slowing yourself down and working on just one small element of something at a time. It’s an idea that I first read about in Daniel Coyle’s book The Talent Code, and have adapted to cartooning ever since.
Why does it matter?
Working with deep practice examples is a great way to avoid overwhelm and frustration and beef up small skills quickly, so it’s a super-positive way to approach anything you are learning to draw.
Deep practice examples — how do you do it
Here’s how we use deep practice techniques on Da Vinci, our live online cartooning course. Initially participants are focussed on improving their drawing skills, and we do that by tracing and copying. Tracing helps them to decode the proportions of any particular character, and copying tests how well they have done so.
Deep practice comes in when you compare your copies to the tracing. By comparing one small part of the anatomy at a time, you train yourself to see comparative proportions more easily, which is the beginning of being able to recreate them on paper.
These are deep practice examples straight from the Da Vinci forum
The two teddies in the left hand column are both accurate — they have been traced from the original. The two on the right hand side are copies made by referring to those on the left.
Let’s look carefully at the copied bear in the top right hand corner. It’s definitely not an exact copy of the original but how do we know where to start fixing it?
What if you can’t pinpoint the differences?
This is an important point and it’s quite common as you start out drawing. You can see that your copy isn’t ‘right’ but for the life of you, you can’t see why. If this is your challenge, you need to zoom in on just one part of what you have drawn, and trouble shoot that first.
Here’s how…
In our example above we’ll ignore everything but the muzzle and nose area for now. The copied bear has a slightly piggy look about it – we can see that there is definitely something ‘off’ about its muzzle.
To troubleshoot we need to compare its muzzle to the traced version, a single element at a time.
What’s causing the ‘piggy’ look?
- First we notice that the muzzle is too small in relation to the size of the whole face,
- Second, the size of the nose circle relative to the muzzle circle is inaccurate, and
- Third, the nose circle’s position within the muzzle needs correcting.
To fix it:
- You draw a bigger head, same size muzzle, smaller nose circle.
- And you shift the nose circle closer to the top of the muzzle circle.
- And you compare your new work to the original, again.
- When you repeat this process several times, it’s an effective form of deep practice and results in speedy skills acquisition.
What if you can’t get it right first time, second time, ever?
Of course, your ‘fix’ will still not be 100% right. But by going through this troubleshooting process of minute details, your brain will be working on why your work is still not right, and your eye will be sharpen for next time. That’s all we are doing here — gradually honing hand-eye coordination and learning to see and reproduce proportions as they are, rather than taking a rough stab at them.
If you troubleshoot each copy in this way, you’ll be astonished at how you progress.
What’s the final step?
Once you complete your final copy, compare it to the original and troubleshoot a little for the last time. Simply making notes on your copy will be enough to get your brain beginning to re-wire and improve your hand-eye coordination.
You might write something like “my bear’s eyes are bigger and higher than the original. His body is thinner and more oval, his feet are a little smaller”.
That final step pushes you to distil and verbalise the result of your observation process, leaving the subconscious to wrestle with it until you draw again.
In summary then:
Deep practice is a simple way to ramp up skill quickly without overwhelm. For cartooning, it’s simply zooming in on one small element of a character at a time and working at improving how accurately you are drawing it. Even if you don’t get it absolutely right, working with deep practice examples regularly means you will be building your observation skills and hand-eye coordination to draw faster and more accurately.
Next step?
Choose a character you like and work on copying it for around 15 minutes each day for the next week. Use the deep practice examples and process to troubleshoot and improve your accuracy.
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Questions? Suggestions?
If you’re not 100% clear about these deep practice examples (or you have a question about something totally unrelated to this video), I’d love to hear from you.
Leave a comment and who knows? Your question could spark off an exciting new lesson series!