Lesson 1: Pick an old master and copy

Pick any of the Old Masters and copy everything they made. Copy their drawings, copy their paintings, copy their sculpture, copy who they copied, ...copy everything, and do it daily for four years. Only takes an hour to half an hour to copy an old master drawing and it will help you tremendously.  

You just sit down sketch book and pencil in hand and copy from a book or a computer print out, not the computer screen the light messes with our eyes. Only an hour max, then pick the drawing for tomorrow. I used to do it every morning at 6am and I mostly copied Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Rubens, Rembrandt and Pontormo. 

Try to pick someone between Michelangelo and Degas, and you want to be able to copy their drawings first then everything else they made.

No tracing paper, need to bump up your hand eye coordination

Example:

Read - Rubens and Italy Hardcover – 1977, this old master copied everything Michelangelo made. 

Do this and you will eventually begin to pick up this artist's form language.

Do not understand what that bump/form that is on the drawing, buy the book below and try to figure it out. This book is a most have and number 2 on my reading list.

Artistic Anatomy: The Great French Classic on Artistic Anatomy
Feb 1, 1986
by Dr. Paul Richer and Robert Beverly Hale