Good evening Marshall and dear peers! I wanted to share kind of a vulnerable view, so maybe others can share how to overcome it. I had a lot of resistance with this assignment, as well as the previous one of creating a personal library of authors/masters we admire. I personally get discouraged and side tracked by looking at others work. I did a good amount of copies back at Art Academy, and I realized that the satisfaction of emulating somebody’s trick or style was a very short lived ego satisfaction. I became really good at copying a look, but the essence of interpreting and valuing based on my own tastes and beauty standards, didn’t develop. My reaction was to not look at the work of others trying to steal, but to struggle myself trying to decipher my own values. Even today, when I look at these pieces of art, I feel my heart sinks because I am still far away from reaching those levels. I do enjoy working on assignments that test my thinking/sensibility skills because those align with the idea of growing my own library of visuals. Does anyone can offer a perspective shift to provoke a change of heart? Thank you in advance to all of you for your honest, personal responses.

Awesome breakdown of the works of masters! I need to start looking and paying more attention at these drawings..I put so much emphasis on practicing on my own that I don't look at others' works enough.

These lessons really made me realize how, even tho I see so much art in a day, I truly see very little from it. Maybe limiting the amount of art I look at would help with having my mind focus on it properly, but that might be more of a social media usage personal problem. All in all I shall try to keep in mind the phrase "dessert later".

You don't suck at jokes Marshall! I have a question about the importance of line quality in construction. I have learned from my granddad who was a building engineer that if you intentionally waver the line a little, it is much easier to get a very straight line overall. Now I understand that learning to draw fast straight lines is important for artists, because these lines look a lot more beautiful, confident and natural than the slowly drawn jittery lines. Is it important though for something like perspective? Can I use my 'granpa lines' to draw straight lines for construction?

I attempted the challenge six times today. It was fun but more challenging than I expected. Is it more helpful to practice drawing fast lines even if they don’t all line up perfectly or let the line be a little stiffer and pull it slowly and carefully? I had trouble finding a balance. I will try to make this a daily warmup from now on.

The struggle is real. I’m into lesson three of Drawabox, and the advice there is to constantly turn your paper to line up the stroke. (I’ve put that on hold while I do this.) So…I found it strange to maintain the paper in one position and draw various angles. Not sure if this is a lefty thing, but it also took a bit of figuring out to determine which direction to go, push or pull, or maybe toward or away from my body, and finding an angle to draw that let me see the endpoint of the stroke without my hand or arm obscuring it. Marshall, thanks for this, I really enjoy your teaching, and especially the reality checks that this is going to be a lifelong journey with no effortless MAGIC drawing excellence. There’s already too much of that out there in the world. Oh! I also started the Drawing Basics course, so thanks for reminding me of that. I’m enjoying that as well. Working to get the solid drawing foundation that I didn’t get in art school.

Bad habits are hard to brake. I rotate my paper. I found an angle that allows me to draw a fairly long straight line. so I stick with it. I tried not moving my paper and it did not go well. the amount of wavy and crooked lines that came out of my hand was discouraging. had to stop for today. I will give it another go tomorrow. Will post those attempts. the good, the bad and the ugly... Earlier today was still playing with another illusion. not an original. I found it through Pinterest. don't know who did this one originally. I somewhat figured the measurements that fit the page and ran with it. (took me about 5 tries to get it right). My T-square skills are very rusty and I kept letting it get off the side, making my lines crooked. so nothing would match up and I would have to start all over. but in the end. got it to work.

I can see where I need to improve on my lines for this assignment. I did the giant circle first and then the smaller circles. By the last circle (the one with blue lines), I began getting the hang of things a bit more. Question: I noticed that you did not really ghost your lines during the demo. Does eyeballing a point on the circle rather than ghosting to that point better connect your brain and hand(s)?