Torso practice: First self critique is a freebie!

As you know, my self-critique is for the $50 and up range and as a few new people have joined at that level I'm going to kick myself in the butt to get working on that. I'm making the first one free for everyone:

"When I'm working from reference I feel two forces, the representation I have in front of me, and the habits I've developed, both good and bad. I get more out of my practice sessions when I hold my thoughts on these two forces, playing with them, going back and forth from habit to reality. By doing this I see which of my habits hold true to reality and which don't.

One of my biggest anatomical failings (aside from legs, at which I am a total dingus) is the shoulder-to-neck-to-head area. Something about the way all that attaches just doesn't make sense to me, the reason being not enough focused study. When I follow my habits, which are bad in this case, and then correct those bad habits using the figure, I can see where I'm going wrong and can consciously stop myself when I'm drawing mindlessly and falling back into those bad habits. In this case specifically what I tend to do is to draw the shoulders way too high. Every single bust I drew I had to seriously correct the shoulders. Somewhere in my personal art history I wrongly learned to condense the shoulder and chest area where the pectorals were far too high, and therefore the shoulders, and therefore there just wasn't enough room for the connective muscle around the neck. For a while I didn't seem to be conscious of the trapezius muscles at all. I didn't understand the correct sloping of the shoulders, and evidently I still don't, though I've gotten worlds better from a few years ago.

Walt Stanchfield says, “We all have ten thousand bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better,” but the truth is more complicated than that. One bad drawing is a learning tool. Two bad drawings that make exactly the same mistakes are the beginnings of a bad habit. This is why earnest and aware study is so important. You see the mistakes and have the chance to correct them before the bad habits really become deeply ingrained.

I have a lot of bad art habits, especially in human character design drawing, that need to be rooted out. I suppose I could lament having learned these bad habits in the first place that I must now dig myself out of--ideally when we learn art we do it correctly the first time, which is why I’m saying to all you young artists, do as I say, not as I did--but I’m also going to be very zen about all the bad habits that are already ingrained and say: Nothing ever goes perfectly; there’s still time to fix it; focus on right now instead of what has already happened; just work to make things better.

So while these bad habits do annoy me, my job is to ignore that irritation and just work on fixing the problem.

And now for some advice.

As tempting as it is to think of yourself as a bad artist (believe me, I do it all the time) it’s much better to think of yourself as a person who currently doesn’t have a skill but has the opportunity to acquire that skill, and the only way you can do it is through hard work, so it’s time to get  to work.

There’s something very insidious about a culture where you can click a mouse and be instantly rewarded with some endorphin-producing image or text bit or joke, where you can order something from Amazon and have it shipped to you, and it breeds extremely bad brain habits, exactly the antithesis of the habits you need to form to get good at something like making art.

So the second part of the right kind of art mentality is to reject instant-gratification culture. Simple mark-making can be deeply engrossing and gratifying, but nothing about the long slog through making mistakes and making corrections is going to be easy.

If you find yourself stopping when things get hard to click on links, play games, watch videos, browse Facebook, understand that this is an addictive habit that is getting in the way of your goals. In the same way not drawing trapezius muscles where they ought to be there is a bad habit you are reinforcing, shying away from hard work and going right to the instant-gratification is a bad habit.

To escape this bad behavior IS very difficult, but is ultimately way more gratifying than checking Twitter every two minutes.

For the vast majority of the people I know who Want To Learn Art, *THIS*, not any kind of lack of skill, is really what stops them. They have to learn how to love the hard work, to keep going with an easy heart when what they are doing is difficult, frustrating, and doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Studying something as complex as anatomy moves glacially. There is no instant reward. It doesn’t look like you’re getting anywhere, no matter how hard you study. A year of daily exercises and you look back and say, “Huh. Well I DID improve!” but you have to get through that year first. You can’t do this with an internet brain.

So if you’re having trouble working on art the best thing you can do for yourself is take a long computer-break, get all those clicking impulses out of your system, do something that takes earnest focus, like reading a novel or going outside and watching the birds for a while, something to reset your neuron pathways, and then sketch for an hour or two with zero distractions.

Do this more and more often, and do mindless activities less and less, until you have learned how to work very hard on a task that seems to be getting nowhere. You ARE getting somewhere! Just slowly. Much slower than it takes to skim a clickbait article, anyway, which in the long run isn’t helping you, society, or anybody."