No more than four or five drawings later, including this Meadow Pipit, I’d thrown in the towel. I wasn’t happy with what I was capable of, and wasn’t really prepared to invest the time and patience it would take to improve. Why I’d set such high expectations and misplaced optimism for myself in a discipline in which I was totally inexperienced, I have no idea. Where ever possible, I tend to teach myself things – photography, coding, web development, etc rather than read the manual. It makes me feel like I’m saving time, but it’s a false economy. It would be at least another 3 years before I decided to pick up a pencil again.