Blog #8: How to track progress in your drawings

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CHIBI ME - DRAWING by Shight

If you've followed these 3 quick steps to improve your art, you might wonder how you can understand if you're making progress.

I don't think there is a set rule, like check every 2 weeks or 10 drawings but it is fundamental to be able to recognize positive results and progress for 3 main reasons:

1) You know if what you're doing is right and you should keep practicing what you're learning.
2) You feel good and excited about how much better you have become! It's fuel to keep going!
3) You know how much you have improved your targeted area/weakness and when it's time to move onto the next one.

Pretty intuitive huh? Here's coming another "revelation", the key point is... Comparison! Yeah, easy, but you have to compare with sense.
You can compare your new drawing with another old one or someone else's but be careful, it's counterproductive to look up at the very best just to feel depressed and inept in comparison. 
Even though personal progress is very subjective, you can still follow some core principles. 

The core principles are:
1) Same subject: the weakness you're tackling should be the key element in both drawings (hands, a male/female face or full-picture body, etc). The drawing style should also be the same and everything that is not in your interest at the moment, should ideally be similar.

2) Be specific: when you have a more specific goal, it's much easier to notice the difference. Eyes, fingers, nose instead of "anatomy". In fact, you can "zoom" a certain part of a drawing and re-draw that specific part, in order to learn more in details just what you don't like (common subject are hands and feet, clothes, hair). 

3) Similar but different: we all have favorite subjects that we keep drawing over and over, don't we? But you run the risk to repeat the same mistakes if you don't apply a significant difference in what you do. Keep in mind what and how you wanted to improve. Notice by yourself or get real feedback from others you know you can trust because they're harshly honest.

4) Introduce numbers: the best way to measure has always been numbers (though many people might link it to the painful math lessons at school). You can time how long it takes you to draw the same thing. In case you're studying realistic proportions, you can see if you're following the proportions you've learnt (example, a male body is about 8 times his head, nose's width should be around the same distance between eyes, you can find a lot by searching draw/drawing proportions). The same could apply to anime/manga styles with different proportions.


Here are a few suggestions on what you can do to have drawings with those elements to compare:
- Draw this again meme: the point is to re-draw a previous artwork of yours after applying new knowledge/techniques you have acquired from your material research and practice.
You don't have to wait years to do this!
Meme: Before and After by Bampire  

- Fanart: try to copy the same drawing of someone you like but choose carefully someone who you don't deem "out of your league" or "too good for me".
Another Goku ssj 3 by Shight 

- Draw in serie: if you narrow it down to a specific target (eye, hand, foot etc.) you can draw a small detail exactly the same "corrected" way multiple times in order to master it. Kinda like writing ideograms exercise. Of course it doesn't have to be in order on a grid, this is just to show what I mean.


I hope this has given you a few ideas to try out new stuff or approaches to your learning process :)
Next subject will probably be Art fundamental elements, one way to deconstruct and categorize the key elements in drawing.
It will be complementary to my previous blog where I will suggest to categorize your weak points in order to create a path for learning depending on your decision on what to focus on.

Thanks for reading :)

Any comment here or other social media on what other subject or questions you'd like to hear about or whether this is useful or not is highly appreciated.



BLOG LIST: 
Blog #1: The Beginning
Blog #2: The importance of Internet 
Blog #3: Review of the week  
Blog #4: Review of the week
Blog #5: 3 steps to improve your art
Blog #6: Review of the week  
Blog #7: Review of the week
Blog #8: How to track progress in your art
Blog #9: Review of the week

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