>>113806
studying is essential and useful, but a little overrated and overly glorified like its sacred, but again, useful and essential. basically, actually drawing normal drawings is always going to be your main course that you learn the most from, and studying is just a thing on the side. study is for when you are struggling with something, or have some particular problem you are inspired to solve, its not supposed to be all the time. study study ppl end up fundy crabs and get appeal mogged by roblox kids, but if you don't study, you should study.
You do more studying in the beginning, and less and less over time. people make it out to be that studying is the main thing, and those people are wrong; I say this, because in the history of my life, my moments of greatest improvement were from regular drawing. it was when i refined my method with regular drawing that made it much more appealing. I found the study to the initial hump (so yes, important), but the refining is where the magic actually happened that made everything good. So i am more big on refinement of what is studied, than on study, because you can get stuck on study without ever refining it and getting good.
using a reference has diminishing returns, if you ever notice that it feels like you aren't learning much from a reference study, it might be time for you try moving on to memorization instead. sounds scary but its not that bad, doesn't take that long, and is quite fun actually. saves a ton of effort once you figure it out.
the trick is to draw like a coward sticking to what you know, its only if you are being too adventurous that makes it impossible to draw from memory. these things have to be built up steadily, learning it piece by piece, angle by angle. Its not like using a reference where you can just do anything, because you have a crutch to fill the gaps in your knowledge. ya can't expect to do something from memory if you never learned that particular angle or that particular part, because memory drawing is all about drawing from what you already know and already have a feel for. so embrace being limited, embrace doing what you already know and love to do, drawing your fav stuff in your comfort zone, because piece by piece study will steadily expand that comfort zone. you actually don't have to force yourself with some miserable bullshit, its actually pretty great. thats what I did, and it worked for me. now i draw without using guidelines or references, and can just wing it for pretty much anything. I still have to stay within my limits, but my limits have expanded to a point where I can draw just about everything I care to be able to draw, and typically with ease no searching for a ref, and its fun and interesting to solve. this never ever would have happened if i stuck to using a reference, it was through memory drawing that got me to refine things and git gud / effortless / appeal. i was basically just a just a normal kind of bad middling artist before.
as for why i am complete ass rn, my brain doesn't work good like it used to. im retardeder now and can't focus good anymore and it sucks. depression permanantly fked up my brain, and i know i complain too often about it but you would too its lame as hell.
my ability to use reason is mostly unchanged tho, tho i do get tired quicker.