Someone once said that knowledge and wisdom doesn't come in rivers but in drops. Drawing is of course no exception to this old proverb, and if anything, it is defined by it. To allow improvement, little exercises must be done regularly.

At University, life drawing for animation placed a strong emphasis on the frivolousness of the final image, and that the process of looking at, and understanding the physical presence of your subject, is sometimes what matters most. Observing how something looks and understanding why it looks that way is the quinessential thing that facilitates the progression of your skills. Being too precious about your pictures can very easily get you stuck in a rut, as there will always be more detail than you can humanly depict, and cameras exist for that purpose nowadays anyhow. Trying to get everything perfect all of the time in a photorealistic manner can only take you so far.

Being selective, however, and choosing to focus, for example, on perspective, texture, lighting, scale or shape, is what allows you to advance steadiy, even if you temporarily abandon another aspect of the drawing. Most of these scraps, if not all of them, are the by-products of this slow process of improvement.