Now that I want to draw more, I'm getting obsessed with technique. Like, to the point it's getting in the way. I agonise over how to draw something and then I don't draw it because I can't work out the EXACT procedure. I'm starting to remind myself of my gran.
Gran could paint at gallery level. She could have sold paintings for thousands of dollars, she could have had people sit for portraits, all that stuff. But she really wanted to play the piano. She was so concerned about the procedure of playing that she had to shunt personal style off onto a siding and ended up never developing one. Everything she played lacked any kind of syncopation, any rubato, any improvisation, because those could not be taught by a book.
In contrast— at the risk of sounding self-aggrandising— I'm a very good composer. My piano abilities have been compared to Liberace on a few occasions, I can sit down at a piano and while away an entire afternoon just playing stuff without needing to think about it, I can write orchestral music at the level of the great film composers, all that stuff. But what I really want to do is draw. Starting to detect theme here? A leitmotif being played by different instruments?
Obviously, when you're just starting out, you need to understand the technique. You need to read books, you need to see demonstrations, you need to practise. This is all well and good, but I already know how to draw. This is something I don't need any more help with. I don't need to spend 45 minutes deconstructing someone's fursona that they drew for Tumblr, drawing lines on a screenshot trying to divine how their procedure went. I know how to draw in this style already! I've done it many, many times!
I guess what I need is a "Lorem ipsum". Something I can draw when I don't know what I want to draw, only that I want to draw something. When I'm painting, it's the moon over the ranch. When I'm playing the piano, it's the Jolly Roger Bay theme from Super Mario 64 or an improv on a synthpop chord progression. When I'm building in The Sims, it's Dudley's Trailer. I don't have any bog standard starting point for drawing, and I think I need to change that if I harbour any hope of opening commissions one day.
But, yeah. I'm getting way too obsessed over technique. I need to stop that.