Is Academic drawing necessary for oil painting?

This question—“Is academic drawing necessary for oil painting?”—haunted me for a long time. As someone who didn’t graduate from an art school, I often wondered if academic training was the secret recipe for becoming a true artist.

So, I did what anyone would do: I searched for answers, read opinions, and tried to piece it all together. But in the end, I realized the only real way to find out… is to do it yourself. Experience it. Feel it. See what it brings to your work.

To be honest, classical atelier drawing sounded intimidating to me. I pictured endless days shading plaster casts with pencils, copying old master drawings down to the last millimeter. It all felt rigid and lifeless—almost like the “bland” side of art. So I skipped it. I dove into oil painting without going through the grind of pencil work.

Then I hit a wall.

My paintings didn’t look the way I imagined. I knew something was missing. So I took the plunge: I picked up graphite pencils and started cast drawing.

It was torture at first. I worked on the same cast for ten weeks—ten weeks. I tried to be precise. I worked slowly. Painfully slowly. Halfway through, I didn’t even want to walk into the studio. It was mentally draining and honestly, not fun at all.

I kept asking myself:
Is this really necessary?
Can’t I skip this part somehow?
Why am I doing this to myself?

But when I finished that drawing, the answer became clear.

Like athletes train their muscles, artists train their eyes—to see light, form, proportion. That training is what the cast gave me.

I remembered a line from a Japanese animation:

“You can’t enjoy it because you’re not good at it yet.”

That described my relationship with drawing perfectly. And the only way to get better… is to keep practicing.

After a year of avoiding the truth, I finally started drawing every single day. Not always academic work, but anything I could see around me. Because while you don’t have to follow a strict academic path, you do have to train. Especially if you want to paint in a realistic, expressive oil painting style.

For me, the answer is yes—some form of drawing is necessary. But it doesn’t have to be traditional. It just has to be consistent.