My SO went to RISD, is an excellent painter technically and that is what she does for a living. From what she has said the first year or two of art school was j

My SO went to RISD, is an excellent painter technically and that is what she does for a living. From what she has said the first year or two of art school was just a huge grind of doing lots of drawings 8-12 hours a day, ect trying to get as photo-realistically perfect as possible. Lot of drawing people ect. Then there are different styles of painting she would focus specifically on a given style and practice it. But she always starts with a sketch, then under layers, so drawing comes first. She practices drawing all of the time. She goes to live figure drawing at the local art school every week. Basically what I am saying is that from what I understand to get to a high level of technical skill painting, you start with a high level of technical skill drawing. There may be other ways, but this seems to be the typical path.