Uncomfortable

2023-03-29 23:52

While everyone is certainly welcome to use these resources however they see fit, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the course itself is designed for a very specific, and admittedly narrow purpose: to help students develop an understanding of how the marks they put down on the page establish forms and structures that exist in three dimensions. Developing one's 3D spatial reasoning skills in this manner helps make a lot of the other elements used in drawing, illustration, painting, design, etc. much more approachable, so we frame this as our core fundamentals.

If your intent is to develop that skill, then you should follow the course as it's laid out, with the understanding that the whole course works towards that goal, by tackling the problem from many different angles and building up that understanding gradually. Plenty of students stop early and decide to switch to other things at various points throughout the course, and that's fine - it's not exactly an "all or nothing" scenario where you don't gain anything unless you finish the whole thing - but it's not a matter of certain sections being required for certain pursuits. It's all one thing, working towards one central goal.

If your intent is different, then there may well be other approaches or courses that are better suited to your specific goal - though given your goal being digital painting, developing your spatial reasoning skills will be quite valuable as that's what helps us understand the interaction between light and form which dictates the nature of rendering and colour, among other things.

What I might suggest instead of stopping at some arbitrary point in the course, is to follow along with the course but also work on digital painting alongside it. Yes, this will result in your already limited time being spread thinner, but it'll allow you to get your hands dirty with what you're interested in, without putting you in the position of speeding through material that really should not be rushed. Additionally, as I mention in Lesson 0, working on other material alongside Drawabox is actually beneficial - it allows us to tackle the same problems from yet more angles, which generally leads to greater overall efficiency than doing everything in sequence, one after the other.

If you don't have the time to do Drawabox and something else related to digital painting, at the very least painting digitally when adhering to the 50% rule will allow you to delve into that sooner rather than later.