Iterative Drawing - The Fastest Way to Improve

"When you go to art school, you'll find everybody sitting around [practicing] their signature. Don't try to develop a style. Ignore style. Just concentrate on drawing and style will occur." — The Animator's Survival Kit, page 29, author Richard Williams' mother.

You know, there are courses that teach this exact same thing for $80-100. I really appreciate you, man.

Phenomenal approach to learning. You’re absolutely right: analysing the same drawing with multiple variations forces you to see what works and why. But drawing different subjects without analysis means ‘good’ work is usually accidental and harder to repeat.

I spent sixty thousand on Design school and became a creative director and then owned a visual design company.....I love what you are teaching here and everything is spot on. Thanks for what you do, I hope you save some of the young souls of today from some of the financial burden of Art and Design College.

To anyone who wants to do anything in life: "The difference between the novice and the master is that the master has failed more times than the novice has tried." - Korosensei

I have been trying to draw for 15 years. But all I kept doing in that time was trying to copy finished works others had done. I always got stuck on trying to replicate the details and could never break them down to simple shapes and forms. And worse, when copying something, I never felt like I learned anything. It just felt like a fruitless exercise. I watched this video few years ago, not really understanding how to implement it. I got what Sycra was trying to say, but I couldn't drop my fears and pride enough to actually follow the advice. I thought that using a source would be faster than just blindly trying to draw stuff on my own. And I definitely was too scared to try and draw stuff from memory before attempting to look at a source. I mean, who can draw something without looking at it first? THAT must be the phantom talent everyone talks about. So I just kept going back to copying stuff. Just this last week, when I was trying for the umpteenth time to copy a drawing, it never came out the way I wanted it to. I could see every little mistake I was making, but had no basis of understanding how to correct the mistakes. And as a result, every new drawing I did ended up worse than the one before. And I got frustrated more than I ever had. I hit my breaking point and, as if the years of failure were all piled up at once, I vowed to give up on drawing. But in my blind anger, I also had a small revelation. "If I can't copy the source correctly, then to hell with the source!" Out of simple spite, I decided to draw one last thing. I set myself to purposefully draw the source incorrectly. I made the hips too fat, drew the chin off center, tried to make the arms like noodles, put the mouth too far up, made one leg longer than the other, etc. I wanted to vent all my frustration on this one drawing, since I had gotten myself into a mental state where I assumed anything I did would look bad anyway. But I was shocked to find that the figure I purposefully drew wrong looked better than all the copies I had attempted. I thought it was a fluke so I drew a couple more. And again, these strange variations on the source I doodled in about 1 minute ended up looking better than the meticulous, time consuming copies that took me 15 minutes a piece. And more importantly, I had actual fun drawing them, unlike the copying which felt like work. Soul crushing, annoying work that made me dread drawing. So I experimented further and tried drawing random body shapes and faces without a source. And again, the results were surprising. I was drawing better stuff without looking at a source than I ever did when trying to copy a finished piece of art. Somehow in all those years of painfully trying to copy, I had learned some of the basics of anatomy and perspective. But I never felt like I had because I was only using those skills to try and copy a completed image. In effect, I was discouraging myself because my rough sketches didn't look exactly like a fully inked and colored final image. During all this realization, I remembered this video and rewatched it. And suddenly everything clicked. I tried Sycra's suggestion of drawing 20 heads and it worked. After about 10 heads, I found new tricks which drastically improved the placement of eyes and mouth. And after all 20, I had already gotten to a point that I could replicate it in just a few seconds without much effort. And I didn't even look at a source to create the head. I just kept refining the first basic head I came up with. I don't know if someone new to drawing can start right away with this or if you need the years of copying to build the mental library/muscle memory to get to this point. But all I can say is, in my experience, it finally started working. After I dropped my stubbornness and accepted it. And I thank Sycra for expanding on this process. Now I'm going to keep trying this process with all the parts of the body and hopefully move onto landscapes after that.

Another tip when using this method: do ur exercises in pen. i have a bad habit of spending too long on stuff to try and get it 'perfect' but by doing it in pen it forces u to analyze ur mistakes and move on to the next thing to try again and thus increase drawing mileage

I'm 23 and I'm just starting to try and improve my drawing - it's really intimidating when so many people my age and younger have incredible skill already, but I'm trying to have high hopes! Thanks for the amazing advice!<3

20 faces, 20 poses, 20 color practices, 20 compositions. Every day, for 3 years.

16:13 "A thousand (heads) isn't a lot" Oh yes indeed, that's definitely what a certain infamous 13th century Khan would love to hear..

16:57 ‘A full frontal—ah... uhh, no, uhhhhhh...’ ‘There are no accidents’— Master Ooguway

As a student with ADHD and both intuitive/analytical sides of thinking, I've watched countless tutorials on drawing but have never been able to replicate their methods. I almost quit art because I thought there was just something wrong with me; after you explained it, I'm finally able to actually get better at drawing after 6 years. I'm not sure if you know it, but we (people with ADHD) are so thankful for your videos

I fear not the man who has practiced a 1000 kicks 1 time, I fear the man who has practiced 1 kick a 1000 times - Bruce Lee

"If you have just icing, well uh wait that's actually not that bad" Oh, Sycra is truly one relatable person.

dude, this is perfect, hit me in the best ways.

i have adhd. it is Extremely difficult for me to sit down and simply watch a video. but i had to pause what i was doing to devote myself fully to this video because your explanations are so good and i wanted to pay attention. im typing while the video is still playing (sorry, cant keep up that long) but still. this really captivated me. thank you. looking forward to trying this.

Me: watches sycra draw the skull that's pretty nice tbh "this is a pretty bad skull" oh

Drawing from reference is not bad at all. It's actually really helpful. I draw whenever I can with reference, then in class or in any other place without one. Please, know that there's nothing wrong with drawing from reference as long as it helps you improve, try both, someday you won't need one at all.

He really called my art style “chicken-scratchy-unsure-way-of-drawing” 😭

This technique of learning has an actual name. It's called "deliberate practice". This technique can apply almost anywhere :)