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Proficiency and the Fundamentals

2:48 PM, Monday October 9th 2023

Hello! For the 50% Rule, I am practicing my fundamentals. I have a checklist of all the areas I want to practice (e.g. anatomy, form, composition, etc.) However I am not sure how to gauge my profiency. How should artists determine whether or not they are ready to practice the next skill? I am pretty keen to numerical measurements, so should I move on to the next section after drawing a certain amount of subjects? For example, if I'm praticing people in perspective should I move on to the next fundamnetal after drawing let's say, 100 people?

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6:57 PM, Tuesday October 10th 2023

While doing numeric "challenges" like that (draw 100 heads, draw 100 hands, that sort of thing) can definitely be useful, for beginners it really does help to have the benefit of an actual structured course to help introduce them to the concepts of a given topic and how they might go about practicing them. Diving right into it without that guidance means that you're effectively serving as instructor yourself. That's a position one can take more easily when they're somewhat further along, but doing so earlier on has a tendency to cause students to focus just on how those studies/drawings come out superficially, as that is the only way they are able to judge the work - which can cause them to miss the underlying issues that they actually need to work on. More than that, students in that position can hyperfocus on the superficial issues and actually end up missing what might really be holding them up.

That's not to say self-teaching isn't viable, it's just an up hill climb for the very reason that the student would be attempting to teach them something they don't know, with books and one-sided tutorials not being able to catch misunderstandings.

Speaking of misunderstandings, you mentioned that you were practicing your fundamentals "for the 50% rule". You may be referring to the "study" half of the 50% rule, which includes Drawabox, but generally when students talk about the 50% rule, they're talking about the other half. Just to be clear, studies, tutorials, courses, etc. all belong to the same 50% as Drawabox's own assignments and homework. The other half is strictly reserved for drawing for the sake of drawing, without the focus being on actually learning or improving your technical skillset.

2:12 PM, Wednesday October 11th 2023

Thank you for your response! I interpreted the other 50% to be personal drawings and didn't realize studies fall under that category. I suppose that's because whether we are drawing from reference or our imagination, we're still practicing something. Your explanation was very helpful.

3:35 PM, Wednesday October 11th 2023

I'm sorry but I still feel like you're getting the opposite impression from what I said. Just to be clear and avoid any possible misunderstandings, I'm saying that the other 50% is indeed just "personal drawings" - meaning, not with then intent of improving your technical skills, nor with th expectation of a good or attractive result. No studies, no exercises.

You can of course still take other courses alongside drawabox, but you would include that in your rough calculation of how much "play" time is needed to balance it out.

I attempted to clarify this previously because your question made it seem like you were looking to use the other courses for the "play" portion of the 50% rule, which would be incorrect.

2:09 PM, Thursday October 12th 2023

My apologies. I mistyped. I meant to write "studies didn't fall under that category". Thank you for the further explanation nevertheless.

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