The thrill of discovery

One of the wild things about art is you can be taught and taught and taught, but in the end you gotta figure stuff out yourself. And in the end, when you have this epiphany that totally turns around how you look at things...it's exactly what you've been taught and taught and taught all along.

Case in point. I finally, after a year of school and a summer of pretty constant practice, figured out what I needed to do to make my drawings come alive. Simply put, I needed to stop drawing what characters look like, and start drawing what they're doing.

Now that might not sound earth-shaking, but trust me. To me it is. And then I look around, and it's exactly what I've been reading from some of the big names in the field. Walter Stanchfield. Mike Matessi. Glen Vilppu. Preston Blair. And the list goes on.

So here's tonight's life drawing, trying to put that into practice. I've got a long way to go, but I've already come a long way, so it's cool.