I only did a serious study once in my life, despite being an artist

I previously wrote about how I did a study of an illustration by my favorite manga artist at the time for a middle school independent research project.
It is the latter half of the following.

The skills necessary for drawing that I was able to acquire because I grew up poor

I did illustration studies every year, but only once was it truly serious.
The other times, I either just traced the overall image vaguely, or I combined multiple illustrations and added my own creative touches to fill the blank spaces on the drawing paper that couldn't be filled by the reference illustration I truly wanted to draw.

That one serious study taught me so much because of the incredible figure drawing skills of that manga artist, and it still lives on in my art today.
In that sense, that serious study was effective.
To give you an idea of how serious it was, I bought color ink (which was analog at the time) despite being poor so I could draw the main lines in color, I reproduced every angle of the lines and curves exactly, and I poured my heart and soul into reproducing everything—even the shape of the ink bleeds—to look exactly like the original, redrawing it whenever I felt something was slightly off.

However, I have never done a study since then.
Why is that?
I haven't thought about it too deeply, but I know for sure that I didn't want to do it.
Why didn't I want to do it?

First, "it's boring to go out of your way to trace something that already has a finished product."
This stems from the same quirk of mine that makes me dislike the process of sketching followed by inking, as I find "copying" to be boring.

Next, it's because "there is no one else's art that I want to assimilate into myself enough to use my own effort to reproduce it."
If it's a reproduction, the original artist should just draw it themselves.
When someone else reproduces it, it just becomes a degraded copy.
And I don't want to be someone else.
I don't want to be someone else's art, either.
Therefore, it is unnecessary.

Next, "I am not so lacking in drawing ability that I have to rely on someone else's art to draw."
I'm not a master or a god-tier artist by any means.
My drawing ability is only at a level that clears my own minimum standard of satisfaction, but since I am satisfied with it, that is enough.

Next, "because what I want to draw is in my own head, not on someone else's work."
Other people's work, especially popular work, is like a template that has already been classified, tagged, and labeled, so I don't feel the necessity to draw it myself.

But more than anything, it relates back to the first point about tracing being boring, which is that
what I find fun about drawing is "taking something vague and intangible that hasn't taken shape yet and giving it form with my own hands."
That is why "it's boring to go out of your way to trace something that already has a finished product."

…As I was thinking about this and writing it down, I suddenly realized something.
What the source of my discomfort is regarding the term "AI artist" for people who generate AI images.
For me, "drawing a picture" means "giving concrete form to an image in my brain," but with AI, "it will automatically give a decent form to an image in my brain even if it's not even slightly clear."
Well, perhaps the process of repeatedly generating and refining through prompts exists with AI as well.
But it's ultimately just "repeating vague instructions via text," and it doesn't feel like "identifying an image stuck in my brain like a fish bone and trying to spit it out no matter what."

The reason I say it's vague via text is because it doesn't look (to my eyes) like a fish bone stuck in the throat that says "it absolutely must be this way," but rather like "anything that looks like the result of a gacha pull is fine."

In my case, it's not enough to just have a "result" that looks good;
it must be something I have spat out while being aware of the thermal energy passing from my brain to my arm, hand, and fingertips, in order to manifest the fish bone-like obstruction in my throat from my brain into the physical world,

otherwise I don't feel like it's my own art.

In other words,

drawing while feeling the direct energy from my brain to my hand is what "drawing my own art" means to me.

That is what it is.
Conversely, anything created without that connection between brain and hand is meaningless to me.

This is probably something that cannot yet be done with AI-generated art.

Manifesting intangible energy from within my brain directly through my body into a tangible form.

This is what "my own art" is to me.

To return to the topic, studies obviously don't fit this definition, so I don't do them.
As a methodology for manifestation or concretization, there is nothing for me to gain at this moment from other people's illustrations that have already been templated and simplified.

In the first place, I only draw things that can be created with a minimum of these three things: the 'ability to stare at mental images' to focus and clearly see the images in my brain, the 'laws of physical 3D (solids) and shading,' and 'rough human anatomy.'
I cannot memorize advanced techniques beyond that, and I do not need them at this moment.
This is because I can draw to a level that satisfies me with just those three minimum requirements.
I think I will try to master them if I ever need more advanced techniques, though.

...In other words, my only experience with a serious study in my life was the starting point where I became aware of and learned the existence of this minimum set of three.