/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

Left side Sept-Dec 2015, right side Jan 2016- present. I've been drawing and 'learning' art for quite a few years before September of last year but kept regressing to a 'comfortable' zone and never improved. I went through Loomis, Vippu, and a million youtube 'tutorials' for years and the problem was that I was too arrogant to realize that I DIDNT understand anything I read. I would simply read something, tell myself, "yeah I get it" and then move on without actually practicing or fully comprehending what I had just read.

Everything changed when "Drawing on the Right side of the Brain" came upon me. I sat down and did the exercises out of boredom and thats when lightning struck me hard. For once in my life, I tried to fully comprehend what it was trying to teach me. I went at it like a man coming across an oasis in a desert. I had to take a long hard look at myself and reconcile with the fact that I simply did not know how to draw and more importantly, I didn't know how to see. People prefer 'Keys to Drawing' but I'm biased toward DRSoB because thats what jumped started me. I spent a whole month dedicated to that book doing every exercise until I could copy exactly what I could see.

My advice is the same as everyone else. Practice is suppose to be really really fucking hard, really tedious and at times, crazy boring to do, but you HAVE to do them. Great artists STILL do their studies. You need to concentrate and force yourself to make your current drawings better than the ones before. Instead of motivation, lifehack a feedback loop.

(I want to draw something awesome, but I don't know how to draw this pose/render this) -> (Realize that I need to know how to do this pose/render if I want to be a better artist)->(Study, look at reference and practice drawing that reference, this is hard and boring) -> (Get better at my studies and get excited because now I know I've gotten better) -> (Reward myself by drawing that awesome idea I had)