Drills or NO drills!

[scooter780]

Hi I was wondering if you guys do drills to learn/master a TECHNIQUE? Or do you play around more to try out the differnt tools and aplications of a program? thank you for ur time

[ss-kalm]

Depends on how you define drills - I will do tutorials, and have learn't a lot from them.

[Soquili]

A drill is basically repetition and so is practice, practice, and more practice.

Whether you are simply playing around with the tools, or following a tutorial you are practicing/repeating the use of the tools.

Something you may want to try are variations of a tutorial. After you complete a tutorial think of something that would change the final image. For example change the colour, or add some additional shapes, or change the background. You may also want to try using a fill, or blend, or contour used in a tutorial in a drawing completely from your imagination.

[iamtheblues]

What I often do is to try and replicate a graphic I have seen in a magazine or on the internet by using Xara Xtreme. This becomes easier after becoming more familiar with Xtreme's tools, which inevitably involves more practise. But in no way do I regard this as a chore, but is a pleasure in itself, knowing that the time spent becoming familiar with Xtreme has its rewards.
Saludos,
Bob.

[scooter780]

thank you all! very well put answers and pretty well answered my question.

[georgetroy]

I like drills, but tutorials are more interesting to me. It seems like they very seldom turn out exactly the same as the author. Written tutorials works much better than videos. The videos are in your face and are one like commericals for me, unless you play them over and over. I also will take a look at other tutorials and ideas and try to replicate them in Xtreme Pro or in my other graphic programs.

[Albacore]

If this had been posted in the Illustrator topics I would have definitely said drills, using the pen tool. So if you are a person like me who jumps around programmes and if you want to use the Pen Tool in Xara then yes drills are used to get to know certain tools.