NovaQuaide

I think that counts! The goal of that rule is to stop yourself from burning out from hyperfixating on practice, which can be pretty demoralizing and draining, especially in a case where it differs from your favored art/subject matter. I'm kind of in the same boat, where my interest is leaning into figure drawing rather than the constructional stuff DrawABox is working on, but I do find a lot of benefits to my general drawing even if its a little outside of what I personally "want" to be doing.

That being said, it might be worth including some drawing time just to get more used to the tools and all. Maybe a sketchbook or notebook and a pen for doodling on the go would be worth getting, since there's less of a "setup" than painting it might be easier to do it out and about when you can't paint. If its becoming too much of a chore I wouldn't force myself to, though

One of the arguments we make in favour of the 50% rule is focused on allowing each half of your time focus on a specific purpose. During the study portion, we focus on study, and during the play portion, we focus on play. It's very common to want to mix them together, and I can't strictly speak for cases where the student has things like ADHD - but in general, we find that doodling during the time you intend to spend on studying will cause you to shift some of your mental resources away from focusing on following and adhering to the instructions, and will make it more likely that your work won't be done to the best of your current ability.

Rather, if you find yourself losing focus or getting bored, it's better to set the studying aside for the time being.

When it comes to the 50% rule, the focus is never going to be on the results you produce - so for our purposes in the play section of this rule, worrying about the actual quality you achieve is immediately going to suggest that you may not be applying the rule entirely as intended.

What the rule does talk about is aiming for the things you want your future self to produce. That speaks to what it is we attempt to draw, not how we attempt to draw it. If you recall from the "Changing your Mindset" video, I tore up my drawing when I was done. In doing that, I wasn't asking students to destroy their own work, but rather to remember that what we do for the 50% rule is all about what's happening while you're drawing. What you end up with outside of that - what skills you may have improved, what fancy end products you may end up with - none of that matters as far as the 50% rule is concerned.

Setting the 50% rule aside, it's pretty normal to have a limit in terms of how long you're willing to work on a single piece, especially if we're talking about in a single sitting. Lots of students don't even realize that you can always come back to a piece the next day, the next week, etc. - so setting something aside is not inherently the same as calling it done. But there are also going to be plenty of pieces that will just end up feeling stale, that will no longer speak to you as they once did.

There is value in training yourself to push past that (again - we're not talking about in the context of the 50% rule, but more generally), to shift your motivation from coming from that sense of inspiration to having it come more from discipline (this is especially useful if you intend to pursue a career using these skills), but that develops with small steps.

Regardless, your capacity for patience will expand. When I started out, I couldn't take a drawing past 15 minutes. Then 30 minutes. Then an hour. I believe the longest I've worked on an illustration was upwards of 40 hours (across many sessions, of course). These days it's largely irrelevant - my deadlines tend to come up much sooner than the end of my patience.

But again, that's not what the 50% rule is about. So if you get bored of a particular drawing when playing, feel free to jump to another. You can always revisit those sketches and consider whether they're worth exploring further later on - but not as part of the "play" portion of your time.

DrawABox newbie here. I've taken a few college art classes and felt like things never really clicked until I started DrawABox. I'm working through the last section of homework in Lesson 1, too.

I understand how you are feeling because I'm going through the same thing here. Having a specific task to do feels like I am accomplishing something. I'm at the point where I must force myself to do the 50% drawings. But the other day, I saw something extremely important: I am improving. And I am sure that if you are paying attention to what you are doing, you are too!

We can practice lines and boxes all day and not realize that these things translate to usable skills in our non-exercise drawings. My line quality and spatial reasoning have noticeably improved since I started. And the crazy part is that I wouldn't have noticed without the 50% drawings. Shape has started to become form. For me, it was cartoon eyes and mouths that suddenly started to make sense in 3D.

But did improving skills make it any easier for me to do those 50% drawings? To be honest... no. Or, at least, not yet. I am excited to see what has improved. But at the same time, I am nervous that it was a fluke, and this next set of drawings will prove that. But, if we stick with it and put in the time, I am certain that we will continue to see improvement and start to look forward to drawing for fun.

I'm a newcomer here, but I've been practicing art for a few years, so take this with a grain of salt.

The 50/50 rule is something that attempts to give you freedom to draw what you want, as opposed to strictly following the course all the time. It may seem like it's frustrating to draw something of your own, but if you think of it like your judgment free zone, I think it'll be a lot better. Just putting random stuff on paper, anything at all, is good. Draw literally anything. Doodle small 2d shapes if bigger 3d forms are confusing and make you feel bad. You'll practice them in the course anyway and be better at them in due time. Drawing, especially at the start, is about patience. Give yourself the grace to fail, again and again, so it doesn't frustrate you anymore.

As for feeling satisfied, I think that is also quite subjective. A good, straight line is often satisfying. It doesn't have to be a full body sketch, or even a head. As you get further in your art journey, the smaller things will always bring you more satisfaction, because those are the things you draw thousands of times everyday.

This course can often times be hard and frustrating, but it's you who sets most of the terms. Perfectionism is in our veins as creators, and often gets in the way of accepting the mistakes we think we made. Don't worry, is what I'll say. Take it easy and at your own pace, even take a break if you want. It always gets easier.

Whenever he uses words you don't know, like perpendicular and parallel, you're going to have to look them up. If you are at the rotated boxes section then you should have already gone through a lot of material on boxes and perspective as well as plotted and rough perspective. Looking into parallel and perpendicular should have been done a while ago, course wise.

Perspective is hard for a lot of people. It takes effort to understand. Rewatch the parts that confuse you. It is good you are asking for other people's explanations. Whenever I am having trouble with something I often find it is helpful to hear as many different people explain the same concept as I can.

Proko is a good resource

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYlW8XC0MlI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-Y4K4hqZwo

David Finch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lPfz3BFxCM

The Virtual Instructor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjhkxFDvD78

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fcbk_K5qWA

Plainly Simple

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkp1xfWJ9n4

The Drawing Database-Northern Kentucky University

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMXbAPr21di8DjTKCE3EoS4KFtNZ-FDnP

There is also Marshall Vendruff's $12 course on perspective. It is 6+ hours long and has a ton of good information.

And of course there are a ton of great books books on perspective.

the 50% rule applies to all of drawabox

so yes, it also applies to the challenges

hope that answers your question