My mother used to say that she couldn’t remember when I wasn’t in coloring books. Then came private art lessons, then drawing and painting classes in college, a 30+ year commercial career that often required drawing, more painting workshops and classes than I have room to mention, and now a career as a fine artists. And I am still learning how to draw. I’m learning better how to critique my own work. Take this nude, for instance, I need to forget it’s a human, and to dissect all its parts. I can couple the torso with one leg. Are they aligned the way I see them on the model, I might ask. How about the triangle created between the two feet? Is it wide enough? Is one nipple taller than the other, or are they perfectly horizontal as I have them here?

Knowing how to draw is knowing how to be your own worst critic. Like life, it’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey. Maybe we’ll get there, maybe we won’t. We need to focus on the correctness of each step along the way.