How to Improve Your Painting Skills by Training Your Eye
by Juan Carlos Rosa Casasola, 2025
How to Improve Your Painting Skills
A Personal Note: Drawing Isn’t Just About Talent
When I started painting, I struggled with the same frustration many of my students face today: I could see what I wanted to draw… but I didn’t know how to get there. And I’m not just talking about realism, I mean capturing textures, atmosphere, and the emotional character of a piece.
If you’ve been practicing but feel stuck, the issue might not be your hand — it might be your eye. Many people blame shaky lines or lack of control. But shaky lines can be beautiful — as long as you’re proud of them. The real problem often lies in how we perceive the world.
In this post, I want to share one of the biggest breakthroughs I had in my artistic journey — and how it transformed the way I paint and I teach painting. It all started with a book.
Left Brain, Right Brain: Seeing Like an Artist
In Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, author Betty Edwards introduces a powerful idea:
We spend most of our lives operating from the left hemisphere of the brain — the part that handles logic, language, and categorization. But when we draw or paint, we need to shift into the right hemisphere — responsible for visual perception, spatial reasoning, and intuition.
That shift in perception is what makes all the difference. One of the most surprising exercises from the book is Upside-Down Drawing. Let’s do it!
Take any image — a photo, a sketch, even a piece of text — and try to copy it.
Afterwards, turn the image upside down and try to copy it in a new paper.
You’ll probably be amazed if you compare the results of both drawings. Why? Because when your brain is confused, your left side gives up trying to name what you’re seeing, and your right side steps in to focus on shapes, angles, and relationships.
The Trap of Symbols
We walk through life seeing in symbols. We know that a face has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. A tree has a trunk and leaves. An apple is red and rounded.
These mental shortcuts help us navigate the world — but they’re terrible for realistic drawing. When you rely on these icons, your brain rushes ahead of your observation. You stop really seeing. And this happens not only by drawing.
To improve your painting, you need to slow down, disconnect your left brain, and look with fresh eyes — without attaching meaning to what you’re seeing. Look for lines, shapes, light, texture, space.
And yes — this way of seeing can feel abstract or confusing at first. But that’s the irony: the key to drawing more “realistically”… is learning to see more abstractly.This is what artists train themselves to do. And it’s something anyone can learn.
3 Practical Exercises to Train Your Eye
Here are some of the most effective perception exercises I use in my painting classes. These are variations I’ve developed over time — and the results are amazing.
1. Blind Contour Drawing
Take a pen and paper. Place your pen on the page. Now — without looking at the paper — choose an object behind you and begin to draw it.
Keep your eyes on the object only. Move your pen slowly and mindfully, following the edges, curves, and corners. Try to take in every tiny twist and turn. There’s an infinite amount of visual information waiting to be noticed.
Yes, the result might look strange, maybe you’ll love it, maybe don’t. But that’s not the point. This exercise builds full presence and sharpens your hand-eye connection. When you return to drawing the same object while looking at your page, you’ll already be thinking in terms of lines, curves, and spatial relationships — not “vase,” “flower,” or “leaf.”
2. Painting Negative Space
This is a classic exercise, and a powerful one. You’ll need a big brush and some acrylic paint. The goal: no thin lines.
Find a chair — in your home, your studio, or even in a photo. But instead of painting “the chair,” paint the air around it. Focus on the empty spaces — between the legs, under the seat, along the edges. Paint the shapes you see, not what you think is there. Follow their true direction and proportion.
You’ll be surprised at how accurate and alive your final piece feels — even though you never “drew the object” directly.
3. See in Black and White
This one may feel familiar, after all, all of us have drawn in pencil on white paper. But here’s the twist: try to draw something while consciously ignoring color. Instead, focus on value — light and dark, shadow and brightness.
A good place to start is drawing a pencil. Forget that it’s a pencil. Instead, draw the shadows and mid-tones you actually see. Your brain now sees shapes, textures, contrast, direction, light.
When you start to see in black and white, your paintings — in color — will become much more sophisticated.