Creating habits

I haven't had a chance to post in a while because I've been busy at work. I got the chance to fly up to our northern studio, PDI, and work for a bit. There are some really talented board artist up there. But, I wanted to post something, so here goes.

Creating habits: If you want to learn how to do something, you have to create a habit. If you want to write, draw, paint, play the guitar, etc, it's not enough to decide that you want to practice. You have to create some sort of daily habit where you do it every single day. My daily habit is doing studies. Every morning before I start working, I pull out a dvd, usually animated, and do some studies. I also pull some books off my shelf at night, if I'm watching tv, and draw from those. That's my daily study habit. I don't really even think about it, I just like doing it every day. In fact, I can't draw out of my head if I don't warm up first by doing some studies. It's like I have to relearn how to draw every morning. It takes me at least an hour just to warm up. And the cool part is, you never stop learning. One day you practice hands, one day you practice poses, one day you practice, acting, composition, storyboarding, etc. You can never run out of stuff to learn.