Over the last month or so, I've been [casually] weeding through material to help me with [re]learning artistic fundamentals. Watching videos, reading blurbs, flipping through books, etc... in order to determine which bits and bobs have truly educational clarity and which are some form of click-bait.
My least favorite so far are "I learn to draw in ___ days" videos. None of them tell their audience how. They express "Here's what I drew on day __, and here's a vague 'I can't put my finger on it' feeling about the drawing itself," and then end the video with "Did I improve? What do you think?" I could go into the long list of why these "informative" videos don't work, but the point of my search isn't to criticize what doesn't apply. I'm trying to find applicable content.
So... things like [the above], I move on from. No interaction beyond the watch/read I gave them (to avoid feeding the algorithm the wrong data).
What I have learned from ingesting the content that doesn't apply is what I am actually looking for. What I will genuinely learn from. "I learn to draw in ___ days" shows the audience what the creator drew and what the creator (personally) feels about it. I'm not looking for that. I'm looking for artists that explain the skill/technique/perspective they applied ... the difference the application made compared to past work and what they learned from the process. I can learn from another artist's understanding of themselves, from their epiphanies, from their growth. I can learn from the "I did a goof by doing ___ and it haunted me so much I now do ___ instead" process. I can learn from watching a person draw or mimicking a frame work while learning why it's done a certain way.
I cannot learn from "I didn't like this drawing." Tell me why... and if the why is "It's not pretty" or "I just didn't like it", I'm going to feel like the creator is just posting for attention or a confidence boost. I didn't come all this way to watch someone pout... I withstood the minutes of piece after piece after piece of labor and creativity to observe you struggle through the process and admit to me [the audience] honestly: what did you learn from your cringe?. Because I'm here to learn, too.
So, perhaps, this is a little bit of a lean into "Not every experienced artist is a skilled teacher". And a slight dovetail off of my rant about self-improvement being a gritty marathon through one's personal underbelly. But, on its own, pointing out that critical thinking is an essential survival skill. Plenty of artists struggle to look at their own work (because we stare at it forever before we share it for a moment). What did you learn from it? What did making it teach you? What did you do differently that made a difference? The piece is pretty and nice to look at it... but do you know why it works?