The first days of my algebra 2 class in high school were easy. I remember Mrs. Davis up at the board going over the lessons, and thinking, "when do we get to the interesting stuff?" Then I went to sleep.

A semester or two later I woke up, looked up at the board and thought, "What the hell is she talking about?" She made no sense to me. Somewhere between those easy first classes and the ones later in the year, the class got hard -- at least for me. Those who paid attention found the classes later in the year just as easy as in the beginning of the year.

The key to unlocking the complexity of a subject is to understand that there are layers and layers of simplicity that need to be digested in the correct order. Jump ahead or skip early lessons at your own risk.

I've skipped some of the easy stuff in art. I've tried to work around it as best I can, but it's much easier to just go back and learn the basic material.

Below is an exercise recommended by Ernest Watson in his book Creative Perspective. He recommends drawing cubes freehand (without plotting vanishing points) to get a feel for how they look. After all, a box is easy to draw in perspective, but a perfect cube takes some practice. Since a cube is a basic unit of measure for proportion in perspective and since the ability to draw squares in perspective is essential to being able to draw circles in perspective, I'm taking Watson's advice. He recommends 50 parts practice to one part theory.

This weekend I constructed six cubes out of bristol board for reference and plunged into the first picture. Forty-nine more to go.