Practice Related Question

>>2719978
There's no magic answer to this because it depends on your goals and how you learn best. You'll have to find the balance yourself for what proportion of studying vs creative work you do. I've known of people who need to do tons of studies or else they don't improve, and I've known people who only paint from their head and never do studies but improve a lot because they are very analytical and grind on theory.

You can also try to blend the two, so bring in creative elements to studies. Maybe if you are painting a photo study you can try painting the same lighting and colours and materials and subject amtter, but try to paint it from a slightly different angle. Or try to come up with a composition based on the study.

At the end of the day I think consistent practice is more important than the exact practice you do. If something is 90% effective but you do it once a week you will improve on a fraction of what you would if you did a study that is only 50% effective but you did it every day.

My routine needs a lot of work and I'm sort of bad at applying it, but I generally like to work in terms of monthly goals. It's long enough to really retain something but short enough that it doesn't get too boring.

Basically I'll set a monthly goal that's relatively broad but based around something I'm bad at, like "Perspective" or "Composition" or "Faces". Then I'll try and work that into my practice for that month in more specific exercises. Not that I need to do it exclusively, I generally aim for something like 15 hours worth of practice towards my chosen topic.

Lately I've been trying to work imagination into my routine in a more serious way of retaining what I study. Previously I've done mostly photostudies and became pretty competent at rendering, but that doesn't get you very far.

>>2719978
Start by taking inventory. Work out how much time you have free to practice in/ how much time your energy will let you practice. Then make a list of all the things you want to practice and rank them in order of what is most important to you. Then set up a routine, it can a one day or multiple day plan. Put the things most important to you first so they will definitely get done, I put creating art as the first thing since there is no point gitting gud if you aren't going to use your skills to make some art. Put the less important stuff later, if your practice gets interrupted at least you got the important stuff done. Then put a list of little bits and pieces it might be interesting to practice if you have more energy than usual one day.

I didn't see a questions thread so I'm going to ask it here. What would I need to practice to make my drawings more fluid? I've been doing gesture drawing but it hasn't really seemed to help. So I started reading Force: Dynamic Life Drawing and it's helped a bit, but I'm wondering if anyone had any advice?

>>2722075
Hard to say specifics without seeing your work. Is it only in figures? Is it in general? In what way are things not fluid?

Force is a good book so it should show how longer gestural lines can be used. Keep in mind gesture on figures isn't going to be complete without understanding all the underlying anatomy as well, so that may be part of the problem.