[Feinam]

I don't know what you call someone who lurks around here and looks but never posts, but that's me! For a little while now I've been working on art and digital art and honestly I'm getting frustrated. I can see improvements in some areas (if I take it real slow I can copy line art by sight pretty well), but in other areas there just is no development (shadows, contour, anatomy).

I was curious if it helps to get lessons from another artist in your early days, or if it's best to just trudge through it on your own. I'm slowly but surely going through Drawing With the Right Side of Your Brain, but I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't be going through the book on my wacom.

I'm a high level piano player so starting over as a skill-less dud is getting frustrating fast.

-Fei

Edit: Typo

[bearsclover]

I wouldn't use your Wacom for this. Use a regular pad and pencil. I don't know how much of a difference it would make, but I know that even though I am adept with my Wacom, nothing is quite as nice as a good old fashioned paper and pencil.

I also think that education is always good. You don't have to rush to take classes NOW, but consider it soon. Get through the Right Side book and take your time. It does take time for all this stuff sink in.

If you only saw all the sketchbooks full of really pretty awful stuff that I produced before I started to get the hang of it�it's just one of those things that takes practice. Don't be too impatient with yourself. Take it easy. The Right Side book is awesome and it will really help, so just relax and keep plugging away.
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Madness takes its toll - please have exact change.

[Impaler]

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is a great book for beginners, since it focuses more on visualization than technique. Learning to see can be the hardest thing to master.

As for starting on a Wacom, I wouldn't advise it. In my own experience, it's better to simplify in the beginning, rather than get lost with all of these options that have nothing to do with sketching. A pencil and paper is all you need.

So, you're on the right track, just keep drawing. Musical performance is much akin to art in the amount of rigorous practice involved. You don't master Faure's Allegro Molto in 3 days after starting to play. It takes years of learning scales and intervals and chords and modes. Think of art in the same way. You may learn what a major scale is on the first day, but it takes years of playing one before you truly know what it is and where it fits into music. You may learn the basic tenets of perspective or anatomy in 15 minutes, but it takes entire sketchbooks filled with cubes and hands before you grasp the fundamental meanings of it all.
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QED, sort of.