I don't know if this is useful, but I found this Love Life Drawing video about how artistic knowledge advances really interesting: https://youtu.be/DH-kFJJX2PM

I’ve been trying to get back into drawing in notebooks after picking up Drawabox again and found that what helped me best was doing reference mashing. After collecting a bunch of references of poses and characters that interest me I’d sit down and draw two of them for reference/practice. Then I’ll take those two pictures and try and merge them taking elements from both. It’s helped me get back to drawing outside of just exercises and warm-ups for the last two weeks.

The purpose of doing all the drills and exercises is to ultimately create something that you're proud of. And the only way to create something that you're proud of is to make a lot of mistakes. To create a bunch of stuff that you're really not that proud of. Every artist on the planet is constantly creating work that's going to get chucked in the bin right after it's done. It's all part of the process and completely natural. But, there needs to be a purpose behind all of the exercises. I like to call it practice versus performance. You're practicing so you can achieve better performances. You're not practicing just so you can do performances. The most practical way I found to balance this is to always have some important project that the exercises and drills feed into. Because if you work for years and Have nothing to show for it but exercises and drills that you do really well they still don't really amount to much. Figure out what you're curious to create. What your basically interested in and day-to-day life then begin trying to create that. Once you begin working on projects that have a larger purpose these projects will inform what exercises and drills you do. If you're deep interest is painting the figure and oils then you'll do a lot more figurative exercises rather than something completely different that's really not going to inform your finished works. Basically, have a balance between practice and performance every single day. I hope that helps!

Sup dog, drawing comes easy to me because of one big reason. The automatic drawing video you can find on YouTube and learning how to draw to relax.

Hello Glen, I don’t believe it is a wax on/wax off kind of thing. Yes the fundamentals are so so important, and you should always practice them, but only practicing and focusing on the abstract concepts like gesture and drawabox can be a waste of time if not paired with other things. I believe abstraction is most affective when mixed with something more concrete. Practicing and rendering an image will help you go back to the fundamentals with a fresh eye. I’ll give you an example, my fascination with animation has taught me the importance of gesture and exaggeration by seeing it applied in the real world. And practicing shading has taught me there is no substitute for good proportion and form no matter how good the illusion of light is. My advice is not to focus too much on what you want your finished drawing to look like, this will hinder you because you will fail and get frustrated easily. Focus instead on your process: The approach, techniques and workflow you apply to a drawing. Practice them until they becomes second nature. Having a good process is the key rendering something in your mind accurately. Learn about light and shading, read about art history, look at art from masters and their process, and most importantly: draw, draw and draw! Copy art from other artists who are slightly above your level instead of the masters who are too advance. Buy sketchbooks that are meant only for you, this can help you let go of the idea of “neatness” and draw without fear. Draw the world around you starting with the simplest objects in your house, or copy quick sketches of faces and bodies. It is a slow process, but a very fun one if you remember to draw without fear. It is better to draw something you’re not happy with, then to avoid drawing because of it. You can always learn and try again from a bad drawing. Nothing good comes from avoiding to draw. Unfortunately you will get frustrated and discouraged at times, it is the nature of art and of drawing, the eternal process of trying to put what is in our minds out in the world. But by letting go of expectations and learning to love the process of drawing, you’ll improve and have fun doing it. I hope this has been helpful!

Hi, Glen, First of all--wow you did Drawabox!! That's a huge accomplishment. Second of all, this is just my two cents, but I have also experienced the frustration of my drawings from imagination looking so bad. For a long time I had to keep my sketchbooks "perfect"--on each page there had to be a nicely-rendered, realistic drawing done from a photo filling the whole page. And though I daydreamed about drawing fanart or pictures that told a story, I wouldn't let myself because I thought it would turn out bad and "ruin" my sketchbook. So I bought some cheap sketchbooks, and they're my "junk" sketchbooks. I'm trying to take Irshad Karim's advice from the Drawabox video about how he started filling up his sketchbook. Maybe you've seen it since you've done Drawabox. I've been drawing in pen (prohibiting me from erasing!), drawing whatever image comes to my mind, and often my drawings really suck! But I try to tell myself that this is my trash sketchbook, and if I draw something I despise, I just make sure I don't go back there in the sketchbook. But I have found that drawing really bad stuff from imagination and keeping it there has inspired me to work on things like figure drawing. Imaginative things have been improving a little since. In case it's any encouragement to see some sucky sketches, the other day I tried to draw Scott Adsit from 30 Rock (the guy in the photo) and it came out looking like this terrible drawing. I just try not to look at it X) TL;DR, keeping a sketchbook with sucky drawings that I can't erase has shown me where I need improvement. I think doing imagination drawings and drills at the same time is a great way to improve at the imagination part.