/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>4801456
Definitely not a halfway decent experiment but I have been practicing very seriously for the past few years. I am trying to master figures and portraits, mostly drawing for now and some oil paint.
I find doing both timed and untimed work to be equally useful practice. When you work with a timer you are practicing gesture mostly, no time for real details on anything in less than 10 minutes. You practice details when you work on the same piece for 8 hours or more.
When you aren't drawing, reflect on your progress. Compare your art over time. Obviously this sounds super basic but part of the process of mastering anything is becoming efficient at pracicting. It's like a gradient ascenf problem in math terms, you stand somewhere on the slope of skill and you are trying to find a path to the top as fast as possible but you can only see a short distance away.
Anyways I rarely do any practice sketches from a reference on less than a 5 minute timer, but I should. I did this self portrait in charcoal yesterday, pretty stoked in it. Took like 4-5 hours. Kind of looks like a startrek portrait because of my signature.