All of the life drawings, anatomy lessons, and lighting studies were incredibly important. He was able to easily apply these understandings to a new medium, so

All of the life drawings, anatomy lessons, and lighting studies were incredibly important. He was able to easily apply these understandings to a new medium, so by the time he switched over he quickly excelled. I feel that if he'd started earlier with paint he would have blasted off once he saw the impact of his own work. I appreciate this from a technical standpoint. It sort of shows the "man behind the curtain" of creating two dimensional visual art pieces, especially because you can see it in such a condensed format. We've all seen progressions of an artists body of work in art publications and curated shows, but what makes this rewarding is we get to see all of the early, average attempts. It's not like we could pick up a book on Picasso and see his first 2000 drawings, but if we could, we would gain the instructive aspects of watching an artist progress.