Nae´s sketchbook

[Naevea]

One question to all daggers: how do you go about your studying, study plans, goals and such?

It sounds basic, but really, focus on the things you like. Choose something you love and become really good at it and someone will want to hire you for it, or someone will want to look at it and follow your work. You seem to already be doing that with figures/anatomy/characters so keep on pushin!

When it comes to actually studying, that's also up to you. Everyone studies differently, in different amounts and with different objectives in mind. I would suggest having a weekly number of hours that you meet based on how much freetime you have, maybe something like 50% of your free time should be devoted to art or whatever, pick something that suits you and go for it. I shoot for 40 hrs a week, which is enough for me personally and keeps me happy and interested, but I never try to meet a daily quota. In my experience that doesn't help me, but having it weekly is ok because then I can balance out less productive days with more work the next few days.

This is largely opinion based, but I think the most important thing in studying is actually, you know, studying the thing. You can do 1000s of drawings/studies everyweek, but if you're just constantly making the same mistakes over and over you won't learn too much. So if you're studying something, spend some time on it to resolve the issues and try to figure out where you're going wrong. Every so often do some things either from memory immediately afterwards or completely from imagination to see if you're actually breaking ground. If not, then do a few more studies. Pretty usual advice, but its very effective in my opinion.

I personally never really liked plans. I used to follow Dave's old livestream schedule when he started CD initially but I found I never stuck to it, and when I did I got so bored doing the same thing every day like that. I learned that I prefer and work better simply going with the flow and doing whatever was necessary at the time, either because I felt like it or because the piece I was working on required it. I suggest trying both, and if you like both, do both. Use a schedule, but also be fluid in your thinking. It's very beneficial to be fluid in thought as well as in technique.

Lastly, I recently wrote a bit about goals in the deathline section of the forums. It's not super in depth or anything, but maybe go read that if you want to (it's called 18 month goal). Basically, 18 months appears to be a very reasonable timeframe to set a goal or deadline for an experiment. Take into account the previous 18 months, what you've accomplished, how you've accomplished it, how you've improved or regressed, assess all that and set a new 18 month goal, taking into account potential growth spurts, and also allowing for unforseen circumstances, such as serious health issues, family issues etc that may arise in the time span. Instead of working towards a 25 year goal or even a 5 year goal like most would, which can be extremely daunting and seemingly impossible without smaller goals in the meantime, set something more middle ranged and work towards that. You can still have an endgame plan, the big picture thing that you want to accomplish, but you should have middle ranged goals that are still fairly complex and demanding that also build up to that. Then make every single day of work you do revolve in some way or another around the 18 month goal, work on things that are preventing you from achieving that goal today and eventually if you are persistent enough you will have achieved it.

Thank you for the response.. I asked that when I was kind of in a low mood from not feeling creative at all.. It´s pretty hard to not get overwhelmed by the originality or creativity of people around you if you are just learning to express yourself freely ^_^
Anyway I agree on the problem with schedules - they are just too strict and once you break them due to anything, they lose their point...

The 18 months plan sounds interesting, though... It´s just pretty hard to pinpoint what goals to set if you see way too many things that need improving... I´m just glad I´m not the only one still fighting here... ^_^

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