I was never a heavy planner, no. I'd tackle lots of small projects, targeted at enhancing a very specific skill. Maybe I wanted to see if I could draw a character to fit inside a photograph, or maybe try to capture the wonky perspective of an island village. I set my goals to be achievable, knowing that I could raise that bar over time. You can easily be your own worst enemy here. If you set out to make your own version of Avatar, you'll probably fail. But if you set out to design a plant that might fit in the world of Avatar, that is much more achievable, and you can build from it! As for your other question, I used to draw every day, as a rule. I was single and had lots of time, back then. Now I can't do that, but thanks to my job I still do art at least 5 times a week (Monday-Friday.) And then sometimes I'll relax by sketching on a weekend, too. In my early days I'd be in the life drawing classroom about 3 times a week. Those were great times. It encourages you to sketch into the garbage can, and get your reps in. I improved so much by drawing so often from life. It helped that I drew alongside other artists who were also improving. = Drawing from life is what fills your visual library, and allows you to then work from imagination. What I think many people don't consider is that one's "imagination" when it comes to drawing will be severely limited if they haven't filled their brain with referenced studies first. Reference could be from life, from another artist's work, or from photos. Ideally all three. You need to download the stuff of life into your brain, for your imagination to take form. Otherwise you may have grand ideas, sure, but they'll be inaccessible because you won't have the skills to bring them out on paper. A good model is this: Draw/paint what's in your brain. It will have both successes and failures. Identify the failures, and shore them up with life study (or other referenced study.) Then try another picture from your imagination. Rinse and repeat. Good luck!

I think mostly what helps is pursuing subjects that you think are fun and that you're interested in. That way, all the research and practice doesn't feel like such a chore! For instance, some time ago I fell in love with the planes of the head, and that fueled so many hours of study, sketches, practice, and even my own entire class about it! If you don't care about the thing you're drawing, then perhaps consider you should not be working on that thing right now, and move on to something else. In my experience, interests broaden with time. I now am obsessed with anatomy, but I wasn't for the first ... 10 years of my art career. I found it was something I needed later, to refine my work. Whereas in the beginning (as with my previous answer), I was much more engaged by gesture and quick sketch. Sketch a lot to avoid art block. Sketches are so under-the-radar that nobody expects perfection from them. Do all kinds of things: isolated studies, master studies, life sketches ... just cram it all in there. Art block likes to creep in when you're working on some big, daunting piece. But just don't give it that chance at first. Fill your brain's visual library with observational studies, and tell yourself that you're not even trying to make "art" yet. Trust me, when your brain is nourished by a good visual library, you won't be able to help the art from pouring out.

Hey Monkeybini! As for the first half of your post, I think learning the fundamentals (shape, drawing, light/shadow, edge, etc.) is best done with very simple & controllable brushes. The round brush is great, and honestly I use it 70% of the time. If I reach for a different brush, it is *usually* because I want to make use of different edges. If you think about a shape, you have the basic outline, or DNA of the shape, which needs to be strong and clearly designed. But the edges of that shape can vary wildly. That's where your brushes (or smudge tools) can come in. The problem with a lot of beginners' paintings is they exchange good design for using lots of texture brushes - which mostly compromise clear design. It's hard to control those brushes and it makes everything more difficult and confusing. Another quick tip is to try simply adding some texture to your round brush! I do that a lot, too. I largely do use the same selection of brushes for my work. Over the years I've just found combos of brushes that work well together, and whose marks seem to fit my style and personality. I use the same set for my personal work and client work. But the brush doesn't dictate the style. I can use all my brushes and simply adapt them to whatever style and approach I am using. .... Gesture is more important than anatomy. Period. Without a foundation of gesture, your anatomy is meaningless. I didn't learn anatomy until maybe 4-5 years into my own art journey! That was a little long to put it off, but I was quite strong with gesture, and found I could easily plug in my anatomy learnings into it. .... I didn't go to art school, actually. I had a local life drawing community up the street from me when I was first learning, and I just spent as much time there as I could. There was a teacher there giving informal lessons, and I took a couple of 12-week classes from him, which really helped give me the foundations I needed. Mostly I learned about gesture and form - tools that can be applied to virtually any drawing you do. (Later on, anatomy benefits from your knowledge of form, as all anatomy is is more complex forms being laid on to of simpler forms.) My lesson plans largely revolved around drawing people from life, as well as street scenes and such. I was very much into trying to capture people's unique attitudes and postures from life. I'd sometimes work on my perspective and draw people interacting within their environment (coffee shops, streets, etc.) My tools were a simple ballpoint pen and paper. Later on I added a watercolor brush to add some quick tone. I stayed here for several years; only later did I begin to paint! I hope this helps!

oh god. looking at it now it looks terrible.

So while I think your wording is a bit misleading, I think I agree with the sentiment behind what you're saying. It's not that art shouldn't be fun - it's that there inevitably will always be parts that aren't necessarily enjoyable. Some of it's just boring. I mean, you're talking to the guy that forces people to draw 250 boxes. I'm the king of not-fun. Drawabox itself, is a course that leans very heavily into the idea of learning to draw being like learning anything else in school. There are, however, a lot of people out there that feel entirely turned off by the prospect of doing *anything* related to art in a way that isn't fun - and I feel in avoiding tediousness, they're missing out on quite a bit. But for some people, they simply aren't in the right point in their journey to sit down and do the boring stuff. That said, one should balance things out. Where we do plenty of boring stuff in Drawabox, I leave it to the student to adhere to the "50% rule" - which states that for every hour you spend on courses (be it drawabox or anything else), you should be spending an equal amount of time drawing just for the sake of drawing - basically to help people learn how to enjoy drawing on its own, without worrying about how things turn out. But again, based on what you've written, I think this does line up with what you're saying - so yeah, I can say that I agree with the meat of your view on this.

I honestly hate platitudes. You post a piece of work, share it with friends, and if you happen to be honest enough to express your own misguided judgment of what you've created, you're undoubtedly going to hear "it's good!" or "I couldn't do that" in response. At the end of the day, it doesn't actually help. Maybe it'll make you feel better for a moment, but even that will get old fast. The fact of the matter is, that we produce shitty drawings. We all have, and we all do. Enough garbage to fill our streets, clog our rivers, and span the oceans in every direction. What's so bad about that? I push my students - those going through my Drawabox course - to accept it as a fact of life. It is entirely natural to judge ourselves based on what we create, to deem time spent creating something that turns out nicely, "well spent", and the time spent creating trash, "wasted". But that is only if the end result is what matters, and nothing else. There is more to it than that, however, but we are so easily blinded, especially because the only reason we come to any such course is not to learn to draw - but rather, to learn to draw *well*. We want to learn to be impressive. If however, everything we drew was to be thrust into a smouldering fire the moment it was finished, before we could show it off, before we could really even appreciate it ourselves, what would we have to show for it? Nothing tangible, sure - but we would have the experience of having drawn. The experience of exploring those shapes and forms, exploring ideas - characters, vehicles, scenes, creatures, buildings, and because we're being completely honest here, the joys of exploring our sexual inclinations as so many do. It's worth much more than nothing. The trouble is, it's not a switch to be flicked on in our brains. We're not so easily changed, and when we've spent years in despair, focusing on that end result and the endorphin rush from social media likes, we've entrenched ourselves in ways that only time and effort can undo. Not time and effort towards learning to draw better - but to appreciate what it is to draw, regardless of all else. The only way to do that, really, is to draw anyway. To ignore that voice in your head that says, "this isn't good enough", to ignore the urge to erase or tear out a page. Just *draw*. The first day, it'll hurt. The second day, it'll hurt again. But the next week, it'll hurt a little less. Soon, you'll have no choice but to adapt, to appreciate, and to enjoy. And sure, the growth in your skills won't be that significant, but it's not the point - but once that frustration, anger and despair abates, you'll be left with the resilience and endurance to address that too. I talk more about this in one of my own YouTube videos, "Overcoming the Fear of a Blank Page" - there I discuss my own experience overcoming all those same feelings, and learning to appreciate what it means to draw just for the sake of drawing. You'll find it here: https://youtu.be/mgl6Ll3K3gw