Growth

Today is the twenty-first day of my three-six-five. I've learned more in the past twenty-one days than I have in the rest of my sixteen years. My goal is to gain skill, really. But approaching this with documentation is probably the smartest thing I've ever done. I can literally see my growth. I've never been able to do that before. Even when I get taller I just assume I'm standing straight, but now, with art, I can see it.

This was the BEST I could do exactly THIRTEEN days ago. 

Some of what I did today...

Is it wrong to feel proud? Because right now that's what I feel. This entire journey has been almost entirely me. There were no classes or tutors. The guidance I've gotten was mainly "check this guy out" or today I was told to practice blind contour drawing (I've decided that that'll be the next thing I devout my time to). 

I have an idea of what I'm doing. I'm not drawing abstract figures with distorted bodies anymore, not because I don't want to, but because I genuinely find growth more exciting. It's more fun to see that I'm actually learning something than it is actually making the thing. I love making the thing, but the fire that has kept me going for the past week was that everyday I sit down to draw, I'm better at it. Tomorrow I'll be better, and the next day I'll be even better, and by before I know it I'll be great. There is nothing more fun to me than that. Imagine if school felt like that? I'd be a super genius right now if everyday I came into class significantly better at the class than the day before. Most of the time the next day feels the same as the last. You learn, but a month later you don't all of a sudden have what feels like a new super power.  

I've never been more productive in my life. What makes me so productive is that I feel like I'm producing. I could get into writing like this because if I spend a hour typing I don't feel that I am a better writer after that hour. If I spend an hour drawing thirty second figures then I can physically see that I am better at drawing. 

I have taken a break from painting at home. I like it, but I feel like it's a wast of time and resources right now because I end up spending over an hour painting a single thing. In that same time I could have drawn 120 figures. I want to learn painting, but I won't be spending much of my at home time painting because I am trying to master the basics. Most artists, like Min and Ashley and Sarah and Michelle have been doing this for years, and they initially gained their skill from doing exactly what I'm doing, but spread out over years in their childhoods with doodles of anime and other stuff, so they pick up a paintbrush and they already understand how to draw a face and a body and hands. At the same time, there are things to learn about painting, that aren't learnable with a pencil. My plan is to paint during STAC and draw at home. If I spend my STAC time painting and home time drawing I can learn about the technical side of painting at school, while at home I can learn the technical side of making things I see appear on paper. This way, I can successfully utilize my time, and grow. 

I also have abandoned the idea of quitting because I don't find it fun. I want to commit to this, and I don't care if it's fun. I don't see how it could be not fun. Even when I'm doing what should be boring drills, I still keep going. I've moved past the point where this is just a phase. A phase doesn't consume most of my day. I went through poetry phase in middle school. But in middle school I never spend hours researching how to hone the skill. In middle school I never sat down for three hours and wrote non-stop. I've seen so many females naked. A gay boy doesn't put himself in front of over two hundred sets of boobs because of a phase (the website i use for figure drawing doesn't have many male models, the ratio is about 8:1, and 90% of the time the guy is this old asian dude). This isn't a phase. 

I was told it takes twenty days to create a habit, and my 365 has been going on for twenty one. I don't worry about missing a day anymore because in my mind that sounds impossible. To miss a day would mean that for an entire day I didn't touch my sketch book. That sounds insane to me. I dedicate a lot time to art than just the physical drawing. I spend hours researching, and more recently I've devoted a lot of my time to finding programs/classes for the summer. To not draw anything would mean more than just not drawing, it would mean that for an entire day I didn't do anything. 

My 365 is very popular. Because I post on Facebook and Instagram, I end up with an incredible amount of traffic to my site. An average of 34 people stop by my site a day. Sometimes you get fake people going to you blog, but I'm sure they're actual people because my stat tracker on blogger tells my they came from facebook. My STAC blog gets two or three for every post. I don't advertise it at all, because my extended family should not see this, but if I were getting 34 people a day reading my posts, I'd post way more often. If I were to actually forget a day people would notice. I love that. 

I want to get to the level of the artists in STAC that I admire most. I doubt that I'll get there soon, but I am sure that if I continue my 365 with the passion I have for it now, I'll be as incredible as they are by the end.