I'd argue that you don't even need to apply what you are learning, only because this is what is said in lesson 0:

Not to learn, not to improve, not to develop your skills, not even to apply what you've already learned. There are no restrictions on medium, no specific techniques you must use, no subject matter you must focus on. Draw the things you'd draw if you were the most skilled artist in the world; draw the things your brain insists you're not ready to tackle just yet.

You have the complete freedom to draw as you wish. :)

I've interpreted it as "keep drawing whatever you want to draw in whatever medium you like, but maybe try to apply anything relevant you find in the lessons."

So for instance, I'm currently just about to finish Lesson 1. For me personally, from day one I felt the most useful things to take from Lesson 1 into my "drawing for enjoyment" time were: confidence, drawing from the shoulder, and ghosting. More specifically, I used to chicken scratch a lot when I drew, making lots of hesitant little interrupted lines mostly by pivoting my wrist. Now I am trying not to do that but to ghost my lines and then draw them confidently from the shoulder. With that approach, the subject matter is irrelevant: I could be drawing boxes or dragons or sports cars or flowers.

I'm not going to claim that an observer would look at my drawings now and what I was doing before I started DAB and think there was any significant improvement in my drawings - they are still basically terrible! I do think though that there are a few subtle positive changes. For example, my lines and curves might still not be in the right places, but at least the "noise" around the outlines from chicken scratching all the time is gone.

(Caveat: I "draw for enjoyment" on paper, IDK if things carry over as easily if your chosen media is digital.)

Whatever you want!

It's a legitimate question. It's easy to get a little bit lost when starting drawabox: you're learning a lot of new things, and it may be hard to "use the techniques learned".

There is to important things to consider while drawing apart from drawabox (which is absolutely needed btw):

• first, have fun. drawing boxes all day long can discourage you and is not a lot of fun. So, just enjoy. Draw whatever you'd like, without always having in mind "I must think this as an organic shape".

• second, really get the most of the lessons and to progress faster, the best way is to try to draw "what you'd like to draw", but applying the lessons techniques. It makes more sense when you passed lesson 2, but for example, if you draw a plant in a drawing "for fun", don't draw the same basic tree anyone could draw, but try to draw it as organic shapes or whatever.

If you don't understand all this, no worries. Trust me, you'll progressively understand by going through the lessons, and it's not a big deal.

Just, if something you're drawing for fun rings a bell and tells you "oh yeah, I've been doing this with drawabox", try to approach it like you'd do in the lessons.

I agree that drawing is a great way to get distracted from everyday problems, but sometimes, it doesn't help me. Well, I just prefer switching to something completely random and get positive emotions from betting, for instance. With pages like https://takebet.ug/betting-tips/ice-hockey/nhl/today, it's not that hard to place a winning et, and it actually helps me back up my brain when drawing doesn't help.