What does it mean to think like an artist?

I have been a fan of David Hockney for decades. Like him, I was brought up in the north of England. It is grey and bleak at times. The first time I saw his extraordinary use of colour and that Californian sunlight, I was hooked. Since his death, I have been reading all the great quotes from him. They reflect my philosophy so well that I feel validated and in awe. Hockney’s ideas around drawing and looking are exactly on point. I admire him even more if that were possible.

David Hockney spent much of his life returning to a very simple idea: we don’t see the world once. We learn to see it. “Learning to draw is learning to look”.

That idea has been sitting with me while I prepare for my course launch, The Tuesday Artist, because it cuts through so much of the noise around what it means to be an artist.

We often talk about talent, or style, or whether someone is “good enough.” But Hockney’s work keeps pointing somewhere else. Seeing is not fixed. It is something we develop through attention and intention.

Drawing is one of the ways we do that. Hockney drew throughout his career and every day.

The myth of the artist

Most people carry a version of what an artist is supposed to be.

Someone is naturally talented. Someone who always knows what they are doing. Someone with a recognisable style that arrived fully formed.

But that version has very little to do with how artists actually work.

Most artists are not trying to “get it right.” They are trying to understand what they are looking at. They are testing, adjusting, questioning, and often making work that doesn’t succeed. Being an artist is a process; it is a practice.

What artists actually do

If you strip away the mythology, most of what artists do is quite ordinary:

They look carefully.

They ask questions.

They notice relationships between things, scale, distance, overlap, light, weight, and rhythm.

They make marks to test what they are seeing.

And they get it wrong, constantly. The difference is they don’t quit when they get it wrong. They stay with it.

A drawing is not a finished statement. It is a record of attention, a way of thinking through looking.

This is why two drawings of the same subject can look completely different. They are not copies of reality. They are interpretations of it.

Thinking like an artist

This is the shift that changes everything.

Thinking like an artist has very little to do with subject matter. It has everything to do with how you approach what is in front of you.

It looks like:

• Slowing down enough to actually see

• Being willing to get it wrong and keep going anyway

• Noticing what changes when you draw instead of photographing

• Letting a drawing evolve rather than forcing it to be finished

• Trusting that looking itself has value

Hockney often reminds us that each medium teaches a different way of seeing. Drawing is no different. It trains attention.

Why this matters

Most people don’t stop making art because they lack ability.

They stop because they lose trust in themselves.

They compare too quickly. Judge too early. Decide that the gap between intention and outcome is failure, rather than part of the process.

But that gap is where all the learning lives.

Drawing is not just about images. It is about building a relationship with uncertainty and staying with it long enough for something to emerge.

An invitation

The Tuesday Artist is a six-part programme designed around this idea: that making art is not about waiting to feel confident, but about learning to see and think differently.

To build a practice that holds even when motivation dips.

To stop treating every drawing as a verdict on your ability.

And to start treating it as part of an ongoing conversation with the world around you.

If that way of thinking feels familiar, or even relieving, then this might be for you.

Not because you need to become someone else.

But because you may already be closer to being an artist than you think.