As it was explained in Lesson 0. I'm still far from that goal, myself, despite the time I've put into it.
I interpreted that as embracing and accepting your failures and mistakes, and encouraging people to draw for the joy of it. Don't kick yourself when the result isn't what you were looking for, but instead be happy for those mistakes because they're an opportunity to learn and improve.
The other side of it that I learned from the 250 box challenge is that it takes a lot of practice to get good at something. So instead of being frustrated about not being able to draw a perfect hand (for example), draw hundreds of hands and look closely at your work, to understand how they can improve.
I figured that's the intent, as well. Also, what do you do when you see mistakes, and have no idea how they can help you improve? Note that in this hypothetical scenario, you're still way too result-oriented
To quickly answer your first main question, I feel that it gets easier over time to focus less on results and more on learning the many small and important facets of drawing/developing intuition. I made it a goal to actually start drawing in octoberish of 2019, as a College grad with 0 experience in drawing apart from a stick figure here and there. Even today, I will still look at the types of works I would like to achieve, and still fall into the trap of getting frustrated when I underperform (by a massive margin might I add) to what I want. The only real difference between then and now is my ability to more easily brush it off and keep trying. As Uncomfortable mentions, drawing is a step by step process, you want to handle problems one at a time, and being able to improve your abilities to do so in such a manner is invaluable. Once you have gotten far enough into the course, you will get to a point where you can look at what you are capable of now compared to before, and that was a MASSIVE motivation boost for me, even if my drawabox exercises looked like crap.
As a reply to this question, it depends. If you can see you are making a certain error over and over again, and you know WHY it is wrong, such as constantly getting the one vertical line on the opposing side of a box incorrect, you can start working on that and you will improve with that over time. If you know that you are doing something incorrect but can't quite figure it out, even after thoroughly thinking about it yourself and trying to find it, critiques are invaluable. I am currently experiencing this myself, with colors and lighting. I KNOW something is wrong with how i apply color and shading and I can't pinpoint it so I am currently trying to gather some critiques and information from wherever I can.
And be sure to do your best to follow the 50/50 rule, as it can allow you to focus your result oriented attitude on something else rather than your exercises. It cannot be emphasized enough that the drawabox exercises are just that, exercises that allow your mistakes and problems to be laid bare so you can see them and consciously work on improvement. If you are stuck in a result-oriented mentality, the 50/50 rule really can feel like anathema, you start drawing something and in your mind you already know what you want, you start drawing and the more and more it does not look like the final product you envisage ,the more frustrated you can get and you just stop. I fell victim to this up until I reached the final stretch of lesson 5 about 2 months ago. With what I have learned about perspective through drawabox, i have started drawing things like cityscapes or buildings, stuff that I can make, and look something similar to what I would like to achieve for the 50/50 rule. My main goal to draw things like characters, and be able to illustrate scenes in color, but by putting my focus in one aspect of drawing at a time, I can see and feel my skills improving. I am nearing the end of the drawabox course soon, so I am branching out and trying to learn things like color and shading, but I am still putting the vast majority of my focus into learning perspective and being able to manipulate shapes and forms in 3d on paper.
Sorry for the wall of text, about 11 months ago I was in your shoes, and I only changed about 2-3 months ago so I know how you feel and it SUCKS.
Can you summarize your answers to my question? I have a hard time understanding based on what you said, since there's just so much... you know ^^;
I haven't had too much trouble. I deliberately do lots of practice stuff and throw the results in the recycling quite deliberately to avoid seeing them as anything other than practice. Always believed in follow the process and be surprised by the results rather than wondering how much I have to do to be this good etc.
I can see how it is difficult though. People underestimate how much time, effort and patience it takes to be good.
This mentality often creeps into my other interests as well as at work. As I've gotten older I try tellling meself "this isn't going to kill me" or "there's worse results to have in life" in order to get over it. The main things I remind myself is that I will be forever learning; that lerning to draw well is going to be a long,long journey and that is a good thing to look forward to.
These are my favourite sketchbooks, hands down. Move aside Moleskine, you overpriced gimmick. These sketchbooks are made by entertainment industry professionals down in Los Angeles, with concept artists in mind. They have a wide variety of sketchbooks, such as toned sketchbooks that let you work both towards light and towards dark values, as well as books where every second sheet is a semitransparent vellum.
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