>>104993start keeping everything no matter how bad it is. if nothing else, it is a record of progress. if your current drawings look better than the ones three months ago, you know you've made progress. if you use perfection as your standard and destroy everything that doesn't meet it, you will have no useful benchmarks. how can you learn from your mistakes if you wipe them out of existence? save them so you can study them.
>perfect enoughI have been an artist for 25 years and I can tell you there is no such thing as "perfect enough." I can guarantee you everybody from amateurs to first-year art students to michelangelo has had to look at pretty much everything and go "that's not perfect but it's good enough" (or "it'll have to do") for every type of work - sketches, final semester projects, commissions. it is extremely rare that a piece comes out looking just like you originally intended. part of making art is going with the unexpected and "happy accidents" and making the best out of it. you will learn as much from doing that as you will from attempting to perfect your technique to the point of flawlessness. and sometimes in doing the first you will unintentionally end up doing the second as well.
also, if you do attain flawlessness in your technique, what then? the challenge will be gone. you will be a laser printer with charcoal under its nails.
I'm not saying that the end product is unimportant, but you would do well to focus less on it for the time being and focus more on the process. allow yourself to enjoy making art and don't force it to hinge on whether it looks good enough. you'll get there. enjoy the ride, don't drag yourself there kicking and screaming. if you do that you might as well just get a shitty part time job instead of having a hobby.
