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5 users agree
7:33 PM, Sunday May 10th 2020

It's much simpler than all that. Basically, the "first half" has nothing to do with any kind of a lasting result. No physical end-product, nothing to gift or sell or look at fawningly afterwards. Nor any skills improved. I mean, these things may happen, but that should not be your goal or intent.

There is only one point in this - to learn how to draw without having any expectations of the end result. To allow yourself to aim high and fail without having to feel crushed by it.

To that end, if you're drawing specifically to give something as a gift, or to do a commission, then that doesn't fit the bill - the results matter in those cases. It really just needs to be drawing for the sake of drawing. Take risks, draw the things that interest you, but don't expect them to be useful for anything. Some people talk about wanting to draw comics, so I'd tell them, go ahead - but expect that you'll probably have to redraw those pages later.

At the end of the day, it's all about learning how to manage expectations and disappointment, and not to actively avoid the pain of something not coming out the way you'd want it to. It takes practice and exposure to develop resistance to those kinds of motivation-sapping inevitabilities.

2:36 PM, Tuesday May 12th 2020

It bothers me because I think that it's totally fine to wish for a good end-result when you draw, and even when aiming high and above your skill level. When one knows that improvement IS inevitable a wish for a good end-result is another force that keeps one on drawing again and again, regardless of failures. Well when we aim and above our skill level I do think that such wish should by no means be a priority, yet I don't see a need to eliminate it...

But overall I agree. Thanks

12:48 AM, Tuesday May 19th 2020

The problem that Comfy wants to try and eliminate is when people get hung up on something looking good or not. If your primary goal is to have a piece that looks good, then what do you do when they only thing you can make looks bad?

Many people give up at that stage and it's such a shame, so like Comfy has said here, learning to live with something that happens to look bad that was drawn anyway is really important.

1:58 PM, Saturday May 23rd 2020

Yeah, it's important not to fixate on excellence. Currently I separate halves by asking whether I intend a particular drawing to be evaluated (by me or someone else).

5:38 AM, Friday October 9th 2020

Please, should references be used for this 50%, or is it supposed to be all from imagination? I know I’m not supposed to care about the results, but when I tried using references I felt like I was just mindlessly copying the outlines, and from imagination, I realized I had not idea what anything actually looked like I wanted to draw (even things I’ve drawn from reference before). I read you saying it will be frustrating and hard at first, and thank you so much for the freedom of drawing like a child again and drawing all the things we want to draw but feel we’re not ready for yet; I know I need this breakthrough and time bisection as I obviously have a lot of resistance and experience misery where should be fun.

7:48 PM, Saturday October 10th 2020

The way I look at these things, I feel that anything that is done strictly from a single piece of reference, with the intent of replicating that reference, is a study (and therefore belongs in the same 50% as the rest of the Drawabox work, as an exercise done to learn/improve).

You can however use multiple pieces of reference to help as you draw something of your own ("from your imagination"), and that would count towards the 50% of drawing just for the sake of drawing.

8:54 PM, Saturday October 10th 2020

Thank you, Uncomfortable!

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