How much time to spend on each topic?
2yr
c0baltist
For the past few months, I’ve been trying to follow the “solo artists curriculum” created by Radiorunner, which is basically an art curriculum that artists who can’t afford art school can follow. I’m still on the first unit of the first term, which is Proko’s figure drawing fundamentals course, and there are about 3 units each term, each of which *ideally* take an estimate of 1-2 months to complete. However because of my busy college schedule I tend to take 1-2 weeks on each of the lessons (gesture, the bean, structure, etc.) and am currently on landmarks. So I’ve been spending about 3 months on just one unit (which will end up looking like 4-5 in total) and I’m wondering if my pace has been too slow? I’ve been fine with being consistent and finding time to draw each day, however there’s not much time to do that so I can only give about 1 hour and I feel that that’s not enough for me to properly process the topic and so I end up adding an additional week. Does anyone have any recommendations on how much time should be spent completing each topic before moving on? Or is my current system fine?
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2yr
Hey Chavel, congrats on building your curriculum and carving out time to develop your skills with a busy schedule. Stan and Marshall discuss this popular question in a Draftsmen episode if you haven't seen it. Here's the clip! https://youtu.be/VFB7deiL-3s?si=rgUVL0psFOqcBjKt
Also- it's tough to comment based on not seeing where you are in your art journey, (post some pics so we can see your work!) but no matter what level you're at, if you're struggling with the Figure Drawing Fundamentals course I'd highly suggest checking out the Proko Basics Course. You may need to solidify your foundational drawing skills before jumping into Figure Drawing. I know this might feel like adding more course work and increasing your study time, but if you pause your work in Figure Drawing and focus on fundamentals you'll be able to get more out of the Figure Drawing Course once you feel like you're able to dedicate more time to it.
I have owned the figure drawing course for many years and always find my self dropping off around the landmarks portion. Recently I decided to purchase the fundamentals course and I'm 30% through it and I can confidently say its well worth it. the information covered is so critical to understanding any other course you could take, whether proko or elsewhere, and the exercises will really help develop necessary muscles and intuition needed for pretty much any form of draftsmanship. I'm very excited to return to the figure course but I've noticed that I don't feel a need to rush with this one which is a very good sign to me about the quality and value of the course. I also plan to follow the radiorunner curriculum but I absolutely agree with Patrick that this is a great addendum to it for the beginning.
Thanks so much for your advice. I’m going to post a few of my drawings from some of the topics and watching that video helped a lot. Also for the basics course, do you think I could get a good grasp of it from only watching the free videos? I already paid for the figure drawing fundamentals course and wasn’t intending on spending money on any additional course anytime soon, but I wonder if just watching the free/YouTube videos will be as effective
