The Magic of Follow Through

Monday Motivation

When I was in art school I had a life drawing class. I was completely intimidated by this class, I had never drawn people before. In the first few weeks we did a lot of quick sketches the gesture and I was getting comfortable drawing people.
In the middle of the semester I noticed I was still having issues with drawing people and I didn’t seem to be improving. I was doing all the quick warm-up sketches and watching the instructors demos but that was all I was doing. I never did follow through with the rest of the drawing process and so had no practical skills just theory from watching the demos. I realized I had to face the hard part of drawing and follow through to the end of the process.
The last part of the semester I made sure to not just do the warm-up sketches and watch the demos but also complete the drawing, mistakes and all. I would love to say that by the end of the semester I had mastered figure drawing but that is unrealistic. I did however really understand the drawing process, learned what I needed to work on and could practice and I did improve much quicker.

Decide what it is you are going to learn. Example: I’m going to learn portraits or hands

Follow through to the end. Example: After I sketch the gesture I will continue with the form and anatomy.

Practice and stick with it until you know it. Example: I’ve drawn 100 hands but they still look off, I will continue to study the hands until I can comfortably draw them

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