Am I practicing wrong or right?

[ReneAigner]

Oh, I do agree with that to a degree! That's more or less what I meant with my original post about techniques that transfer the reference (3D, photos etc.) directly into the final image.

The only caveat is that for certain areas/sujets, like the human body or light and colour in general, a lot of practice is necessary to not just understand the concept (which you can do by intellectual analysis, which need not necessarily take long) but also to be able to actually execute it on your canvas. The latter is a skill that needs honing over a prolonged period of time.

But yes, at some point in time doing still lifes, for example, yields only minimal gains if you've aleady done a lot of them with varying objects. At that point those studies can become a "spinning your wheel" problem. This all goes back to deliberate practice- identify weaknesses and ruthlessly eliminate them. Easier said than done in my experience :D