>>6347
I think the iterative approach is almost mandatory if your learning without someone else to regularly critique your work and point your mistakes. One thing that become apparent when you fill a page or two with drawings of a similar subject is that patterns emerge. It becomes obvious which mistakes are just due to poor draftsmenship vs repetitive errors stemming from misunderstanding what the thing looks like and how to effectively communicate that.
Regarding how varied your practice should be, I have a personal theory that variety is important for putting additional strain on your brain to form numerous interconnected neural pathways. The brain builds new pathways in response to stimulus, so I theorize that maximizing the "stimulus load" through variety will lead to the most sought after gains. My routine at the moment would be something like drawing heads for 30 minutes, alternating between male and female, switching between headshot, 3/4, and profile views, sometimes looking up or down. When I start getting tired of that, I'll do cubes and ribbons, messing around with perspective stuff. Get tired of that, start doing some facial feature studies: eyes, noses, mouths have been a focus recently. I need to mix in ears as the others are slowly coming along.
I'm interested to see what sort of progress will be had at the 6 month mark. Will it be better, average, or poor?