My Takeaway from Drawing Class

About a year and a half ago, I picked up a pencil and started to teach myself to draw. I started making art for fun in my free time and tried to improve at this hobby. I would doodle and often just make marks on the page until it started to look like something -- often abstract or surreal in nature. This year, I decided I was good enough to take a class and that I might benefit from guided practice. In the ten weeks since I started this class, I have not only seen a very noticeable improvement in my real-life drawing skills, but I also learned how to see the world in a whole new way.
Using perspective to see how lines and curves actually look vs. how I expect them to look has made a huge impact on my artwork. Before this class, I would simply draw what I felt was correct. This resulted in a lot of abstraction because I could not get shapes to match up with real life. After only a few weeks of practicing techniques like measuring distances and angles by holding the pencil at arms length in front of my eyes, I have gained a much better perspective for putting the world onto paper.
Before taking this class, I was nervous that signing up for it would make my hobby into work. While this class has occasionally required me to draw for longer than I would like (and therefore occasionally made it feel more like a chore than fun) I am glad I signed up for it. I now have many tools in my learning box from which I can continue to build on and improve. This class helped me learn to be a better designer and I hope to continue learning these techniques in the future.

Thanks for a great class, Professor Fick