I'm working on my stats. My batting average since October is 25%. For every four long-pose drawing sessions, I manage to produce one drawing that I am satisfied with.
I told my excellent boss that the other day.
Like some other truly nice people I know, she said "enjoy your class" when I headed off to an instructor-less drawing session. After all, someone "going to drawing" must be attending a class.
I know it's well intentioned, but calling practice a "class" drives me a wee bit crazy.* I'm suspicious of the assumption that I am taking up a hobby: learning to draw. I haven't told my well wishers about the amount of effort I've already put into drawing, so there is no reason that they would think otherwise.
Practice, as in training by repeated exercise, isn't a big theme in art history. Perhaps people think art skills are innate or learned once and retained forever, not dependent on repetition. When artists speak of their "practice," they use the term to refer to the work they engage in, like a doctor or lawyer's practice, a profession.
Drawings produced at drawing practice are generally not precious. The drawings I produce are certainly not creative expression. If I wanted to express myself creatively, why would I draw a model posed and lit by someone else? If I have an idea for a picture, I don't leave it up to someone else to give me its subject. If I want to explore colour or materials or form, and I'm leaving the content up to someone else, it's just practice, with the goal of adding more skills to my toolbox.
Why do I keep practice drawings? For some not-so-good reasons: to prove I can do something; to be able to prove it to someone else. Narcissism, self promotion, all those self things. And for one good reason, to figure out how I can do it better. Which is why anyone practices anything.
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*In all honesty, my ego goes postal. It interprets "enjoy your class" as an attack: taking a drawing class is something middle class, middle aged ladies do because, at this stage in their lives, they have a little extra leisure time. Therefore, because I am female and of a certain age, I am likely to be only a hobbyist; I am unlikely to be, by objective measure, good.
(Unfortunately, even though I agree with it, hearing "practice makes perfect" would not make my ego a happier camper.)