Am I practicing wrong or right?

[Zearthus]

Hey Brian! Looks like you're off to a good start and it's great you have some artists in mind who influence you the most; it's always good to have an idea of a style or direction you want to take. These guys gave some awesome advice, so I would just want to add a couple things which I think would have been very helpful for me in terms of my mental approach. I hope this isn't stuff that you've heard a million times before but I'll just go ahead with it.

One comes from a quote that Dave Rapoza had in his forum signature which is: "'If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake." As you keep doing studies you will eventually begin to feel comfortable with them, and that's when it's good to keep that in mind as you go along. Not necessarily that you have to do something left field that you'll never use, but I think we all know the things we should be doing that will help improve our work but are afraid to do because we think we'll fail or look bad. That's something I try to keep in mind but it's tough :)

Another thing would be an awareness of the ups and downs of doing this. You seem grounded with the meditation and such, which is good because (at least for me) it can be a rollercoaster of doing ok, to doing well, to complete despair, back to doing ok. At least when you are aware that you will reach some dark times, you can channel that energy into getting back to the positive and persist even though you may feel like all of this isn't worth it.

And lastly I'd say to figure out what you enjoy drawing and painting, then pursue that. It isn't easy not to, but don't worry about what people may think and just go with what you like because it'll not only be your biggest motivator but probably get you the most work in the end. So try and put down some of your own ideas as you do these studies and develop your personal imagination (stories, characters, things you think are cool, etc); that will be an important asset as you go along.

Hope that's helpful. Let me know if you have any other questions and best of luck!

Even if it's stuff I have heard many times, I think its good to be reminded. Why? Sometimes you just forget one simple phrase you noted down, until someone else mentions it again. It gives you this aha moment where everything makes sense again. Making mistakes is something I always do, and learn from. After all, I believe that's one crucial part when it comes to learning. Especially at time where your mind is working hard to figure out something, to the point you're getting a headache here and there, shows how intense what you're trying to learn is.

As for meditation, well it's something I do on and off, one of those things I need to remind myself to do more often, especially during dark times like Yesterday haha..And definitely need to do what I enjoy doing the most, since I'm one of those learner who always just go hard core learning, and forget about personal things that satisfied me, and keep the energy going. Thanks for your respond, really appreciate it :D

Looks like you've already got this sorted out and got some good advice but you requested my opinion so I'll share

Like others have said, there's no such thing as practicing wrong, nor is there anything wrong with learning multiple things at the same time. However, as Jones said you will end up taking more time to develop all of them and consequently that can hold you back from getting somewhere you want to be. My suggestion would be to *study* everything you are interested in (you seem to be doing that already) but then apply all those studies in the one area you like most. I like characters the most, so most of my personal work and most of my best work is related to that. However if you look through my sb, I tend to bounce around between study topics. They all feed off of each other. The fundamentals of art are universal and transferable, it's a question of how much does each piece require of each facet of the fundamentals. For instance you can get away with a basic understanding of perspective in character art. It's still important but the percentage of it's importance is lower in order to achieve a good result compared to hard surface objects

If you're still in your first year or so of serious studying of art, then bounce around a lot. Whatever you find you have a natural aptitude in or have a natural desire to pursue can take priority first so that, as jones said, you can learn how to learn. I agree that that's the most important part of this whole process, is to learn to love learning and to find ways of making it work for you as an individual. I liked portraits a lot so I did a lot of those at first. I had no idea what i was doing though but it was the only thing i felt comfortable doing. I never really liked environments that much or perspective or hard surface objects, and that persists to this day, however it's important to dabble in them regardless because they make my figures better in a round about kind of way, and you inevitably expose yourself to different ways of thinking and of working which is SUPER important. I hated environments/landscapes when i started painting and avoided them because I didn't understand them. But I researched them and how to do them anyways and I wound up discovering techniques to do landscapes that gave me immense confidence in all my studying and personal work.

So to summarize: Start off with your natural strengths/interests, over time branch out to things you are afraid of for a while and experiment with those, bring what you learned back to where you want to be and repeat. My personal opinion is that it's a good idea to spend at least half your time on the field you think you will pursue as a job, and then have the other 50% split between the other facets of art in whatever proportion you choose. If you find you like something else more, so be it! Focus on that and see where it goes!

Yeah, this is indeed my almost first year, started around June last year. Not sure if this is something everyone likes, but I always had a keen interest in drawing animals as seen from last year sketches, but I stopped with it due of wanting to learn more about the human body, but when it comes to birds or things animal/nature it always attracted my attention. Same with figures from lets say the way motion goes through Steve Huston's figure, Bridgeman, Villpu, Michael D Mattesi. So in a way, gestural kind of figure/way of doing things.


Thanks for your resonse Patrick Gaumond!

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Again thanks for taking the time to respond to my question peoples. Really appreciate it, and now have more insights to note down in my notebook. Keep on drawing, keep been awesome peoples.