Why Drawing Practice Matters
I did a post a few days ago about perfectionism. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then, both in terms of this site and in terms of my drawing.
The first one was the first wolf I drew when I started drawing for the new “how to draw a wolf” tutorial I just put up on the site. I had not drawn a wolf in a long time, maybe never, and this is what my first attempt looked like.
Not pretty. Pretty awful, in fact. So I took the proverbial deep breath and tried to do a little better by breaking the image down. The next drawing looked like this:
Not really better, but it was just a study anyways. And even as a study it looked better than the first drawing of a wolf.
That first try almost made me run to the refrigerator for solace while I considered finding a nice day job.
And then I drew this:
Wow! Okay, I lot of you, maybe most of you reading this could draw a better wolf. Heck, after a few more days of practice I can draw a better wolf now. But the difference between the first and third wolf was so huge that it continues to puzzle me. I guess I’m almost puzzled to realize that I really can still draw, because I sort of thought that it was beyond me, that whatever I did when I was younger was some kind of golden opportunity now past. Or I at least thought that I was going to have to work really hard, and draw a lot of wolf #1s before I picked up the skill again.
But I picked it right up. I just had to do three drawings to get there.
Its weird to have a website about drawing this long and stumble across this belief that I really cant draw. That is what has kept me posting public domain material for so long. Of course, it takes a crazy long time to do each drawing tutorial, but I like the results so much I am willing to settle down into just making two or three pages a day.
Besides, who knows how much better I can get if I just practice a bit more?
