Drawabox.com | Part One: The Basics | Lesson 0: Getting Started | Changing your Mindset | The 50% rule (2024)

All of you are here because of one central desire: you want to get better at art. As such, your focus falls squarely on one thing: your drawings. But your drawings are just one part of what it means to draw — they're just the end result, and while right now to you that's the most important, I propose an alternative view:

The end result is getting in your way.

Our entirely natural obsession with drawing things that look good — to impress ourselves, to impress those around us, and to impress people on the other side of the planet whom you've never met — is above all else what holds us back. It stresses us out, and puts us into a state of creative paralysis. It pushes us to focus on nothing but practice, on training, on exercises, and leaves us drained. And worst of all, it makes us fear doing precisely the things for which we're learning these skills.

Oh, if I had a nickel for every student who declared "I can't draw that." It's such a common statement, but what it really means is "I can't draw that well right now, so what reason do I have to try?" Or more poignantly, "To try would be a waste of my time." And for this, I blame traditional academics. School makes us terrified of failure, and declares "success" as the only useful result. But I think differently.

If there's one thing you take away from the video above and the rest of the material on this page, it's this: don't just spend your time studying. Not everything has to contribute specifically and obviously towards improving your skills in order to be worthwhile and beneficial. Your technical skills are not the only thing that matter.

Traditional academics are to blame. They teach us to value grades, to value results, and that anything that does not produce those results is a waste of time. They do this not because it's an efficient strategy to help students learn, they do it because their goal is to push as many students through a factory production line as possible. They do not have the time, nor the resources, to make students the best they can be — and it's not their fault, either. There's just so many students they have to force through.

By taking the time to draw just for the hell of it — that is, not to make something cool to show off, not to learn something, not to improve a skill, not to impress your parents — but just to draw, two things will happen:

• First, and for a while, you'll experience frustration. It won't be fun, as trying to do something and showing yourself that you aren't capable of it rarely is.

• Over time, you'll find that frustration decreasing, and your willingness to try things that will inevitably result in failure will increase. You'll be more willing to take risks, to experiment, and to explore.

The 50% rule, which we introduced in the video above and explain further in the material below, is not about having fun. It's about making drawing something you can eventually enjoy. That is, in spite of the damage traditional academics does to us all. And we achieve that through balance.

Something most of you have probably thought, or said aloud, is "I don't know what to draw," or "I don't have any ideas". While this is undoubtedly how it feels, I guarantee you that the likelihood you have no ideas floating around in your head is pretty slim.

Ideas are a dime a dozen — but the kind of ideas I'm talking about aren't fleshed out or developed. They're vague and undefined. They're so insubstantial that we regard them as nothing at all. A rounding error. After all, if it's just one tenth of a useful idea, then that's not that far off from 0.

But that's where all ideas begin. What we need to know is how to actually explore them, to develop them, to take them from a fraction of a whisper of an idea to something you can actually work with.

For that, I leverage what I call "The What If Strategy", which I talk about in this video I produced for the Proko YouTube channel.

It's actually a preview — a chapter from a course I produced for Proko's library. That video is what is most relevant to students here, but those of you who are interested in pursuing a career in concept art may want to look into the full course, which you can find for sale here.

It is not a technical course — it focuses more on establishing students' understanding of what concept art is as a profession, how it differs from things like illustration, and how one might think about the problems concept artists face. It also talks about how we might leverage certain tools (like 3D modeling, among others) and more importantly why. It also includes recordings of these 6 environment design explorations, with around two hours of narration explaining what I was thinking about as I worked through it.

The goal of this course is to help prepare students with an understanding of the work being done — so it is relevant whether you're well on your way, or just getting started. And of course, purchasing it helps to support all of the free information we share here on Drawabox (although buying it is entirely optional).

For those of you who are struggling to come up with anything to draw, we actually have a tool you'll find on the home page that'll provide you with a random, detailed-yet-open-ended prompt to get your brain juices flowing.

While there are already dozens of different prompts there, we add new ones every season with our "Promptathon" event, where all our students are asked to stop their homework and instead join in with the community (primarily on our discord chat server in drawing just for the hell of it.

As mentioned above, traditional academics all the way from kindergarten to college and university really does a number on us. It makes sense — they're trying to push so many students through the system, and so grades, assignments, and tests that focus on memorization make sense. But that doesn't mean they're the best approach — and they're certainly not the most effective when it comes to learning how to draw.

Why? It's actually quite simple. It is through making mistakes that we learn. No mistakes, no learning. Doing something correctly the first time never taught anyone anything — it was by messing it up, by reflecting upon those failures (ideally with the help of someone more experienced) and addressing them that we develop true understanding.

Your job as a beginner is to fail, and to fail a lot. But many of you will find that to be a painful, frustrating thing, and so you'll try to avoid it. In so doing you'll avoid taking risks, avoid pushing your boundaries... you'll avoid all of the things that you must do in order to grow.

This is an extremely common statement I hear from students, whenever we ask them to draw just for the hell of it. It usually goes something like this:

"I don't know what to draw"

"Well, what would you draw if you had all the skills in the world?"

"I'd draw X but I'm not ready to draw that now."

Beginners — in that they are exactly that, beginners — don't have any understanding of the wealth of concepts involved in drawing (nor should they), but they are frequently quick and declarative in insisting that they can't do something, or that they simply aren't ready.

Here's the thing — when you say or think that, what you really mean is "I'm not ready to draw this in a way that I won't find embarrassing, because I'm going to fail". And that's exactly the point.

Here, you'll find some drawings of cars from when I was younger. I was ready to draw them, and so are you.

If the mental block that tells you you're not ready refuses to budge by sheer force of will alone, then start small. Think of it like you're exercising the muscle that represents your willpower, or your control over yourself and the choices you make. Right now it's small, and fears of not being good enough to try something you're interested in may be overwhelming. Gradually, this will strengthen that muscle, and so you'll be able to exert more control over the choices you make.

Starting small can be as simple as doodling abstract and arbitrary shapes or patterns on the page. From there, you can start drawing simple representational things — silly little cartoons, nothing serious, nothing ambitious. And from there, you can start pushing into subject matter that may be a little daunting, because as you put time and effort into this, the barriers you put in front of yourself will get smaller, and they'll even start to move when you push on them.

Do not be complacent, however — always push against those boundaries. If doodling is easy, then try to push yourself up to the next stage, always keeping in mind and aiming for the things you want your future self to produce.

And finally, that brings us to why this is relevant to you. Everyone following this course is expected to abide by what we call the 50% rule, without exception.

The 50% rule is simple. All of the time you spend on drawing is to be divided into two equal portions.

• At most, half of your time spent drawing can be used for studying. This includes your Drawabox homework assignments, work from other courses, as well as self-driven studies or exercises. Basically this half will include anything you draw with the intent of improving or learning.

• At least half of your time drawing must be spent on doing it for its own sake. Play. Exploration. Pushing boundaries. As explained above, many of you will not find this enjoyable. The intent is not to have fun — the intent is to develop your capacity to enjoy things that don't result in something that looks nice, or that otherwise helps develop your technical skills.

Additionally, remember that the spirit of the rule is all about balance. Balancing the time you spend studying with time you spend exploring and playing. Do not worry about the specifics of "do I count the time I spend reading/watching the material towards my studies" — it really doesn't matter. This isn't something you need to use a timer for, or track with any real diligence.

Studying is addictive. It feels productive, it feels like you're using your time well, and it makes anything else feel like a waste. Sticking to the 50% rule means making the continuous choice, every day, to fight against that.

This is a rule — meaning, if you wish to follow this course as it's intended, you must make every effort to hold to the spirit of it. That also means that the why's of it all don't really matter — but we do get further into that in the video at the top of this page.

There are a few questions we get pretty often in regards to the 50% rule, so let's clarify them right off the bat.

Should I be trying to apply the techniques from Drawabox while working on the 50% rule?

No. Draw in whatever way feels most comfortable to you. Drawabox is designed to have you drawing so much that you will have plenty of mileage to take the lessons and push them down into your subconscious. The lessons will become instinct. Rather, as you play, it’s better not to be too stiff and worried about technique. This is the time where you want to just let go.

Do I have to do my 50% rule in pen?

No. Draw with whatever tools you’re interested in using. A lot of students come to Drawabox really interested in digital media, but end up disappointed that we focus so much on traditional tools. I get it — I’m almost strictly a digital artist myself — and we’ll get into the reasoning for this later. Rest assured though, you are welcome and even encouraged to dive straight into drawing and painting digitally as soon as you like, for this 50%. This will also have the benefit of helping you get used to the specifics of using those tools, as this is yet another skill that is separate from these core fundamentals of drawing, and will need to be explored at some point.

Can I use reference during the 50% rule time?

Like everything else with this rule, it comes back to your intent. Are you reaching for reference because you're afraid of drawing something inaccurately, or wrong? If the motivation behind it is fear, then no. Face your fear, draw it without reference.

If however you wouldn't have any issue drawing without the reference, and are just looking to have more tools at your disposal to play with, then go for it. Just make sure that what you're drawing is not in its entirety, just a copy of a reference image. That would be a study, and would fall into the study portion of the 50% rule.

A good strategy is to first roughly sketch out your idea without reference, so you're forced to make all the decisions as to what goes where, how it's laid out, and so forth. Then, using this sketch, find suitable reference and then redraw it. This will help ensure that the reference itself is not deciding for you what you should be drawing. The control should be in your hands, and the choices should be yours.

At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with using reference in general — what the 50% rule focuses on however is breaking down the barriers we put in our way because we're afraid, because we're anxious, and because we don't want to make mistakes.

Where do portfolio pieces fit into the 50% rule?

The things we draw will generally fall into one of three categories. Practice, Play, and Performance. Technically a single drawing activity might fall into multiple categories, or even all three — but the more we spread it out, the less effective that activity is at accomplishing the intent of any one.

The 50% rule addresses practice and play, but we leave performance out for the simple reason that most of our students are beginners, and so most of them aren't really in a position to be concerned with it. Performance is all about showing where our skills are right now, and beginners are understandably lacking in those skills to show off. We certainly don't want to give them the impression that they're supposed to come already equipped with skills.

If however you're one of those students who's filling in holes in your fundamentals and want to spend time producing work that shows where your skills are right now, then how you work it in is up to you. You can choose to split the 50% rule into three chunks of 33%, or you can do 50% for play, and split the rest up for your studies. I leave it up to you, as long as you strive to hold to the spirit of the rule.

As the 50% rule relates heavily to mental health, I would be remiss not to take a moment to talk about depression. A lot of people out there will really struggle with the idea of doing something only to fail. As I've mentioned already, many of us have been taught that our value as an individual is inextricably tied to our ability to succeed, to the point where forcing yourself to fail (as this course will have you do quite a bit) can actively trigger depressive episodes. It gets that much worse when you consider how many people actively try and use art as therapy — not as part of a larger regimen under the guidance of a professional, but as their singular self-prescribed solution, and unfortunately it can make things worse.

For those of you in that situation, I strongly urge you to seek whatever professional support you can. Therapy with a trained professional isn’t about changing who you are, or attempting to fix you. Rather, at its core it’s about giving you the tools you need to better manage and understand your emotions, so that when you’re faced with a bad drawing, you can understand not just on a logical level, but deep within you that this does not in any way suggest that you yourself are bad. So, don’t be afraid to step away from this course, and to seek out that help. We’ll still be here when you’re better equipped.

I get it. This sort of thing is hard to understand — at its core, the 50% rule is about accepting that your mental health is more important than anything, and while society may convince you that you are only as valuable as what you can do, that is quite frankly a lie. Your ability to draw (or lack there of) has nothing to do with who you are as a person — as much as you may want it to — and drawing poorly does not reduce one's worth as a person. Just as in quite the same way, learning how to draw better will not make you a more worthy person.

This may be something you understand on a logical level, but believing it is a life-long task you will need to work at constantly. The 50% rule is, in all honesty, a big part of that.

Here's a list of other videos and resources on this kind of topic that can help you better understand how to think about your own emotions in regards to drawing.

• Myself, on Overcoming the Fear of a Blank Page. I talk about how even after a decade of drawing, I still spent most of my time paralyzed in front of a blank canvas — and more importantly, how I finally broke free of that fear.

• Steven Zapata, on Personal vs Impersonal Satisfaction in Art (8:34). This talk is about the dangers of associating your successes and failures in individual drawings too closely with your satisfaction (and dissatisfaction) in life.

I will continue to add onto this list as I find other material.