Recently crossed a two year milestone since I began drawing and wanted to follow up on my one year progression post.
I picked up art in November 2024 as a complete beginner after watching Pewdiepie's one year art journey. I thought I could do it too, so I bought a sketchbook and began practicing daily.
Just as I passed my one year mark, I watched a Proko livestream and realized we lived in the same city in Southern California. Now I had been self taught for my first year, and with my poor judgement, I thought that was a badge of honor. Nevertheless, I was curious to know if Proko offered any in person lessons. But what I stumbled upon was Watts Atelier.
Watts Atelier is an art sanctuary run by Jeff Watts. An atelier where anyone can sign up for as few or as many classes as they’d like, for however long they want, at a fraction of the cost of traditional art school. An institution that has been running for 30+ years and where Proko himself trained as a student and later taught for a total of 11 years.
I thought about it for a month, making every excuse under the sun as to why attending this atelier would be too much. Excuses like I don’t like drawing realism and from life, I don’t like using charcoal and newsprint, I don’t want to spend money, I like being self taught, WTF is the Reilly Method, it looks chaotic. But the more I learned about this atelier and how artists travelled across the world to be there, the more I realized I would regret not attending when it was only a 25 minute drive.
The year was split across six terms, and I took just one class per term, which came out to just one three-hour class every 1.5 weeks throughout the year. It’s what I could manage while working full time as an engineer. The classes I took focused on figure quick sketching, head drawing, and figure drawing. Drawing from life was incredibly difficult, and it felt like starting over again. I mixed in my in person classes with some of their online content and Proko videos, which helped push me forward on the off days. At this stage of my training, it was extremely important to me for all my learning resources to align cohesively. Every instructor at Watts was once a student there. Meaning no matter who I learned from, the concepts continued building on the same foundation. A huge bonus was that I could supplement my practice with Proko’s resources as he also stood on the shoulders of Jeff Watts and Frank Reilly.
To say Watts Atelier has been effective for me is a gross understatement. Learning to become a great artist is not just about developing fundamental skills, but instilling the mindset to be patient, persistent, and persevering through plateaus. Not all of the art journey is fun, and there’s a saying that “misery loves company.” The fellow students and instructors I’ve met there have made this personal journey just a little less lonely. I know it comes from a place of privilege to be able to afford lessons, but if there happens to be any masters near you that fits within your budget and schedule, absolutely take that opportunity to learn from them. The window of time in which we can dedicate ourselves to training is shorter than we think. Don’t regret it.
As for the actual year of drawing, I practice between 2-3 hours a day. I practiced a lot from Proko’s YouTube and his figure drawing fundamentals course. I watched a lot of Watts Atelier online content both on their YouTube channel and one of the former instructors' channel. What I learn in class is pretty much identical to what you’d see from their online program, but my goal in person was to leave knowing what to practice. I didn’t care how my drawings turned out or the mistakes I made during class. What I hated was hearing the same critique in my next session. I wanted to both identify my weaknesses and form a plan with the instructors on how to isolate and practice through the off days. Some may not agree with this philosophy, but there’s a phrase I strongly agree with. “If you have enough starts, the finishes will take care of themselves.” My daily drawings never carry to the next day. If I have 5+ hours that day to practice, then I’ll go for a longer drawing. But chances are I don’t have that much time and I’ll do many quicker sketches to get more starts in.
Although I’ve made a lot of progress this year, I’m nowhere near where I’d like to be. I’ll be training for a long time. The purpose of this post is to share the path that I'm on, not to tell you what you must do. If you’d like to reach out to exchange work or have me share more about what I’m learning in class, I’m all ears.
If you’d like to see everything I’ve drawn since the beginning, as well as what I practice day to day, it's all here on my timeline.
See you lovely artists next year. Happy doodling!
TL;DR Just draw and practice
