Simply Sunday - Aha Moments of Growth

Learning a new skill and recognizing the layers of understanding + an eyelashes moment with a portrait

Hello and happy Sunday!

I hope you had a good week. I hope your weekend is good. But let’s skip the weather talk. What are you drawing? What are you making? What projects are you starting? What are you learning? And…. how is it going?

I’ve been learning and watching myself learn. This week, I found some parallels in a new hobby and my drawing practice. So, today, a bit about “aha moments,” the learning process, and a reminder that we continue to develop and refine our skill. Plus, the Illustrate Your Week prompts for Week 29 and a few podcast mentions.

A glimpse of illustrated journal pages from Week 28, unfinished. Scale is something I continue to work on. Amy Cowen.

We Don’t Always Know What We Don’t Know

When we learn new things, it is often an additive process, a series of steps of layering and refinement. We don’t stand at an easel for the first time and paint an interior with the haunting resonance of an Edward Hopper. We don’t draw for the first time and render a street scene in perfect perspective and detail. Whatever medium, hobby, or skill we approach, we may find that our understanding develops in layers. The slow building and accumulation of understanding may take years.

We don’t always know what we don’t know.

We don’t always know what we don’t yet understand.

This is good. This is lucky. This is some built-in self-preservation feature, I think. When presented with “too much,” we often latch on to a tiny bit. We go from there, put things in motion, see what happens. We subconsciously know what we are able to absorb and use, just enough to move forward. When we enjoy the process, we keep going, and, slowly, over time, we peel the onion.

Along the way, through doing and repetition, we build skill. We build muscle memory. We relax into the process. All of that helps open the door for the peeling back of new layers, little aha moments that continue to shape, inform, and build our skill.

These aha moments are glimmers. They keep refreshing what we know and what we think we know. They are often the most tangible markers of growth. “Aha! How did I not see that before?” “Aha! Now I understand.”

Making Connections

I was surprised this week by small aha moments. I am grateful for these moments. I think they are rather rare, and when they appear, they are exciting. They are warm and shiny. They fill us with satisfaction because we know that aha moments signal new knowledge. We are learning. We are improving.

My aha moments this week were varied, but it was only because of the guitar that I had the perspective to notice the drawing one.

“Landslide,” Capo 3rd Fret

As I have mentioned, I am learning to play guitar. It’s been about a month. My fingers are lumpy with callouses. They catch on everything. My tech devices don’t register my fingers when I try to touch things on the screen, and, ironically, the callouses seem to complicate rather than help my attempts to play. But I keep at it.

As an ad-hoc learner, I know I am doing a lot of things oddly, accommodating my age and shape. I feel keenly the age in my hands. I keep shifting how I hold the guitar because my picking arm goes to sleep. My eyes struggle to make out the small markings on the screen. I know I am not remembering things as quickly as I might once have.

My unpaid “teacher” stopped giving me lessons after the first week. There is still a lot of guitar happening, and I am grateful for what I may someday remember as a “summer of guitar,” but I wish the lessons had continued.

I keep practicing on my own. I think there is a reality to the fact that I might be trying to play the same song for months, maybe even a year. If I want to be able to play something holidayesque in December, I probably should start now.

Reading Tab

Learning to read guitar tablature (tab) to pick out single notes, a simple version of “Ode to Joy,” for example, was easy. It’s a lot like the old play-by-number piano books they made for kids. Play the key numbered two. Now the four. Now back to two. A basic melody line in guitar tab is similar, but there are layers. You have to note both the fret and the string on the tab, the number and its placement. The visual representation is simultaneously telling you what to do with both your right and your left hand.

Diagram showing the basics of simple guitar tablature. Amy Cowen

When playing single notes, tab is easy to interpret. When you look at a simple tab for “Ode to Joy,” it makes sense. 0 - 1- 3 -3 -1 - 0 on the first string, the high E. (It took me a while to grapple with the feeling that tablature is upside down. It’s the reverse of the orientation of your strings and fingers when you are holding the guitar. So the “top” string in the tablature is actually the bottom string as you are holding the guitar.)

So, 0 - 1 - 3 - 3 -1 - 0 makes sense. Those are the first six notes to hold down, one by one, while my left hand plucks the bottom string, once per note.

I still can’t play that song smoothly, but it also wasn’t interesting enough. Learning a bunch of chords and practicing some fingerpicking patterns proved much more satisfying. After practicing chord changes over and over and some basic repetitive finger picking, I moved on to trying to learn a song with guitar tab that includes chords.

It felt like starting all over in terms of understanding what I was looking at. Really, it’s not all that different. But my brain made a jumble of it. I had trouble sorting out that I was playing a chord and the tablature was telling me the chord and then also showing me which strings to play with my right hand and which strings to hold down, and on which fret, with my left.

In theory, if you have the chord correct, the correct “shape,” then “mostly” the tablature will tell you what strings to play with the right hand because you already have the strings pressed down as part of the chord.

Mostly.

I tried several songs before finding one that stuck, one that seemed doable, one that I know the sound of and want to be able to play.

I’ve been playing “Landslide” every day for the last two weeks. It will probably be three by the time you read this. Day to day, I’m not sure I’m getting anywhere, but something keeps pulling me back.

Beginner Mindset

I’ve approached guitar with my best beginner mindset. I am proud of this because I know I am not good at being a beginner. A lot of things come naturally to me, but guitar doesn’t seem to be one of them. There is something really humbling and vulnerable in being a beginner. I am embracing that and the reality that this takes time and practice. In tackling this first song, I’ve been determined and diligent, but I’ve also been realistic. I am not worried about timing. I am playing slowly. I am focused, mostly, on getting better at looking at the tab and seeing and translating quickly enough which fingers to play and, at the same time, shifting chords.

Mostly if you have the chord correct, the tab shows you what strings to play.

That’s what was first explained to me, and I took that at face value. If it said play Am7, I held that chord and focused on what the tab was telling me about which strings to pick with my right hand and largely ignored what the actual number was also telling me about my fretting hand.

I practiced for a while, not fully making the connection that there are times when the notes on the tab require a change in the fingers of the chord. The chord is marked, but the numbers and frets shown don’t always match the chord. The disjunct between the chord and the numbers was there all along, from the very first time I tried to play through the song. I simply glossed right over it. My brain just couldn’t absorb all of it. I overlooked that within the same bar, there might be a 0 and a 1 on the same string, same fret. Only one of those is part of the chord.

A finger needed to either be added or removed.

For a while, I continued to overlook those subtle differences. I was focused on the plucking pattern…. String  2, string 4, string 3, string 5, and so on. I kept the chord shapes in place, and I practiced the skill of looking at the tab and trying to make sense of my right hand.

But we learn.

Slowly.

And sometimes we learn with little aha moments that light up the experience. Suddenly you realize that you understand something new, something that was there all along and you just weren’t able to see. Something clicks.

Gradually, some of those chord shifts started standing out to me. “Wait,” I would think…. “There’s a change there in the numbers.” “Oh, I hadn’t been doing that. Oh….” And I would look (actually look) at my left hand to see what fingers were being used and realize that I needed to open a string for a note and then return to the chord shape.

When my “teacher” sat down this week (I asked), he first wanted to teach me a bar chord (that my fingers are not yet flexible enough to manage). He wanted to teach it to me because it would allow me to do x, y, and z….. a list of other chords and notes and music theory and sliding along the guitar neck that all muddled together, gibberish in the air. My brain isn’t ready for it. I don’t know music theory. I’m having enough trouble remembering which E I’m playing, by name. The differences in naming just aren’t sticking. I know an E or two, a D, a C, a few As, and two Gs well. I’ve been trying an F. A B is well out of reach.

But, really, I need specificity. I know Em, Am7, Am, A, G/B, G, C, D.

Minor, major, sus, sharp… for some reason, I’m not yet soaking in the naming and the music theory. I’ve had trouble even remembering Edward Ate Dynamite, Goodbye Edward, a mnemonic for the strings. I love a good mnemonic, but it’s taken a while for it to stick. I need to write it a hundred times. I know FACE and “Every Good Boy Does Fine” because I learned them as a kid. How hard can it be to remember Edward Ate Dynamite, Good Boy Edward for the guitar? (I use Edgar, too.)

But right now, the names haven’t felt important.

I’m picture playing. Tab enables that. You play what you see.

There is a bit of “pat your head and rub your stomach” to the process. My awkwardness makes me feel old and slow.

But I am keeping at it. For some reason, I am keeping at it. And I know that’s what it takes.

Bit by bit, I’ve started to notice small differences in what I am seeing when looking at the tab. Each time, it feels like a bit of a victory. I may not be able to do what is shown super fast, but I am seeing these elements with more and more specificity. It is as if new words are suddenly clarifying on the page. I am able to read more and understand more. And the discoveries didn’t come all at once. It’s been a very slow process of refining how I see and how quickly I can interpret what is shown.

The slow acquisition of skill built through practice and repetition is undeniable. I hope that the same practice and repetition will, over time, lead to better flexibility, better reach, better speed, better muscle memory, maybe even better cognitive memory.

I am being gentle with myself. Determined, but gentle.

I can appreciate and love all of my son’s skill and still be gentle with myself and my middle-aged beginner attempts. It requires some grace, which is not my strong suit. But whatever guitar is giving me is worth it.

I know enough about the value of habits and hobbies that somehow bring us peace, somehow give us mindfulness, and somehow fill us. I know enough to recognize that right now, guitar is giving me something important.

I always counsel people about the benefits and realities of practice, of repetition, of doing whatever it is (like drawing a dog) again and again and again. Sometimes people give up because they aren’t as good right away as they want to be. It’s hard sometimes to be a beginner.

Be gentle with yourself and be on the lookout for the aha moments. Celebrate them!

The Eyelashes

I don’t really expect aha moments in my drawing. When we do a specific art or hobby daily, it is often difficult to see growth. I love drawing portraits, and I can see how different my portraits are today compared to  how they were in 2017. When I look back at my early attempts, I am often surprised by the squared and angular shapes to the faces. That I improved over time is clear. But when I look at portraits from the last few years, I often don’t really see a difference. I’m not sure I’m growing or changing. I’m not sure my noses are getting better. My style seems consistent, a flat line. Partly it’s my medium, but partly I tell myself it’s just “how I draw a portrait.” I am not sure my style will ever evolve in more dimensional or nuanced ways. I believe in practice and repetition, but week to week, I don’t see indicators of growth.

I was getting ready to take a photo of my journal pages last week, and I looked down at the portrait and realized that there were no eyelashes. In truth, I often don’t include eyelashes. They are often indistinct and hard to see in photos. In many portraits, they appear as a darkened band on the upper part of the eye, a faint shadow under the eye. Except in cases where the eyelashes are dramatic, I don’t do a lot of eyelashes. But somehow it jumped out at me when I looked at the portrait on the page and thought, “there are no eyelashes.”

I remember when I used to leave the irises of the eye all white…. And then slowly I started filling them in with solid or uniform color. Then I started trying to vary the weight and line inside the eye. Eyes are not solid and flat. Gradually, I started getting more sensitive about the line under the eye. We continue to improve how we see and how we approach capturing and rendering what we see.

When I looked at what I’d thought was a finished drawing and thought, “I forgot the eyelashes,” it felt similar to the moment of “looking again” and realizing that there are subtle changes in the guitar tablature that I had been overlooking or glossing over… until I started to see them more clearly.

We continue to learn and grow.

Being a beginner isn’t always easy (especially if you are surrounded by others who are already practiced and skilled). Be gentle with yourself. But also, remember, growth happens with repetition in all of your creative pursuits. The more you work at your art, the more you will grow, evolve, and maybe change.

🎯 What are you practicing or learning? How is it going?

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Illustrate Your Week — Week 29

The new prompts for Week 29 have been posted.

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Old Episodes of the CMP

Three episodes about “beginning” come to mind:

• Begin (470)

• Start Where You Are (430)

• Osmosis (297) (which includes a book, The Drawing Lesson: A Graphic Novel That Teaches You How to Draw by Mark Crilley)

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