DrawaBox

Hello and welcome to the Draw a Box bandwagon! Looking forward to seeing your work, have fun. Lines count as one subskill of drawing, which is what we do to make art. You'll find that drawing is a complex skill made up of many different skills and sub-skills. When you fail at achieving a certain effect you want, it isn't because you "don't have talent". It is because you are weak in some (or all, lol) of the subskills that make it up. Isolate that skill and practice it, whatever it is. It could be drawing straight lines. It could be the anatomy of the face- maybe you don't know where to put the eyes. Could be boxes. Just practice it.

With a very complex painting, there may be dozens of specific skills going into it. You are looking at perspective, composition, values, anatomy, gesture, etc. and subskills of those fundamentals. And, yeah, stroke control and straight lines and ellipses too. This is why Irshad Karim breaks down his lessons into a series, each building on the skills practiced in the last. Just start and keep going. Once you've built up the foundation skills, you will be able to do some cool stuff with it.

Since you are getting into this a bit later in life, I have one warning- it may have been a while since you did anything you were an an utter beginner at. So don't get discouraged from making bad drawings! It's how you learn. You will get the results you want over time, but only if you practice consistently and do not give up. Check out this guy if you need further encouragement.

Don't worry about how long you spend on a lesson. Just do each exercise the best you can and fill AT LEAST the required number of pages. Feel free to do more. After you've done that, go onto the next lesson, but don't stop practicing! Keep practicing these skills over and over, REPITION IS KEY. Art is just like weightlifting. You won't see amazing results at first, but over time you will build up your skill to a high level. One word of warning- if you are like me, you might get down over perceived lack of progress. Realize that everyone starts out shitty, and you just need to keep practicing to see progress. Sycra has a good discussion of this.

A lot of people talk about how long professional artists practice for, or ask how many hours you should be practicing a day. I think it is best to not worry about that. Just start doing it, try to do a bit more every day, and build up the time you spend drawing. Pro artists practice crazy numbers of hours, but they built up to that, and that is how you'll do it too (if that is what you want). And a smaller amount of FOCUSED practice will push you further than a longer period of unfocused doodling. That said, you do have to practice a lot to become an art ninja. Follow these 5 steps, too, they are good advice (if you can't find life drawing in your area, don't despair, you can use photos and books and maybe a friend will pose for you). There are lots of online resources like this/. If you get a chance to draw real people, though, don't miss it!

That's the idea. The more people contribute and join the stronger a community we can build here!!