Reps beat perfection all day every day.

Reps beat perfection all day every day.

Are you sick of me talking about this yet? Because I don’t think peeps are hearing me yet.

When it comes to art, you WILL get better FASTER if you draw at a lower quality more times than if you attempt to draw one thing to perfection.

If you CAN’T draw an action pose without tearing your hair out yet, start by drawing the basics first in high volume.

An arm in the same pose and angle 46 times. A hand in the same pose and angle 39 times. A leg in the same pose and angle 64 times.

I call these shapes your anatomy alphabet.

Anatomy is much like learning your ABCs. There was a time when the letter R was complicated and you struggled with which direction it went. Or a cursive Z (remember that horrible little f*cker?).

But through repetition you eventually figured it out and now you don’t even think about it.

When you do high reps of the basic shapes of anatomy (arms, legs, hands, heads, torsos, eyes, mouths) you’re doing this to learn the “letters” that make up the “sentence” that is the human form. And posing that human form, shading it, and giving it action and movement is a poetic paragraph.

All too often I see aspiring artists trying to bite off more than they can chew.

They haven’t learned how to dribble yet but they’re challenging LeBron James to a 1V1.

Once you can comfortably draw an arm in any pose, a leg in any pose, a head, etc, then you can assemble these parts in any way you choose.

And if you do that with shading, angles, textures… eventually you’ll be able to dunk all over LeBron!

Reps always beat perfection.