Pax's Progress

[Pax]

I was doing cs50x on EdX for the past few weeks, and something that really stuck out to me about how the course was taught is that there was a MASSIVE emphasis on chunking. Honestly even as an introductory course I was expecting way more roadblocks and struggles, but there was always a massive emphasis on breaking concepts down as small as possible. Almost always, the stuff that was learned in the lectures was immediately applied to an open ended problem in the problem sets, rather than a more typical worksheet-esque problem set. Coming from doing a little bit of code monkey work when I was younger and struggling with it, I was expecting it to be really difficult and for me to really struggle, but it was chunked enough so that if I did not understand a concept that was being taught I could almost always source it back to some flawed understanding of an earlier concept, and the most fundamental concepts are stressed enough so that a "mastery" of them occurs rather easily.

Maybe this is how art should be taught. What I've noticed drawing for the past year or so is that I more or less attempt learning some facet of art, fail enough to get discouraged, give up for a couple days, and then come back with either a different facet or a different source of information like that's going to magically fix my problems. I am so used to how education is done in schools, where there is always a tried and true answer to the problems given.

So, ironically, I guess, once again I'm going to change my methodology for studying and this time really try to stick to it. I've found that priming myself mentally like what Crackedskull talked about in his guide really helped me get through cs50x rather quickly, and hopefully I can translate that into art gains.

I guess, the most fundamental aspect of studying art is accuracy. Accuracy leads the way to confidence, and accurate (2d) studies allow for a confident and accurate placement of construction and forms that works. It would make proportions a hell of a lot easier.

The question is, how  do you properly study accuarcy? Whenever I try studying something I feel like a fish in the desert, I'm so confused about what I'm actually supposed to be getting out of it. Especially for understanding design, I have no clue how to properly study it. And, maybe there is no proper way per se but there's got to be a more efficient way. Right now, this is what I have for accuracy:
From lowest difficulty to highest:
1. Dense (8x8) Grid Copying
2. Medium (4x4) Grid Copying
3. Sparse (2x2) Grid Copying
4. Sight Sized Subject, all 2d
5. From life

The question now is, how do you check for accuracy in life? For all of the others, I'm just comparing via photoshop. 








Lastly, I gotta stop being a little bitch and just do it. Really, I psych myself up so much about how it's gonna be so hard and bad and awful, and how everything I make is gonna be awful, but then the experience is never as bad as I make it out to be (sometimes even really enjoyable) and because of Dunning-Kruger effect (?) the majority of my work is viewed as mediocre (not good, not bad).

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/10/27/...stination/
This article as well really helped me power through cs50x, and was quite the eye opener. Problem sets while watching sitcoms or listening to podcasts were way easier to get into, and oftentimes I'd end up turning off the distraction once I got far enough into flow that it just became a nuisance. Viewing doing problem sets as watching a sitcom on netflix and doing problem sets to keep my hands occupied was way easier to swallow as opposed to putting sitcoms in on the background while I do this problem set, even though I knew I was lying to myself. Definitely another device I hope to bring to my future art study.