You see what you did wrong?

As I've mentioned before, the mentoring relationship that I share with my 'little' Jamal, has a funny way of teaching me things sometimes. About 4 months ago, he completed a mail in art test from the Art Instruction Schools. Maybe you've seen one of their commercials on television if you found yourself with nothing to do in the middle of a weekday afternoon. I had seen one or two of the commericals over the years, but never paid much attention to them. When Jamal showed me his completed mail in test, I was deeply impressed with his performance, but somewhat skeptical that anything useful would come of it. About a month later, a representative from the Art Instruction Schools came to his home to speak with Grandma about enrolling him in their course. When he told me that it costs about $100 a month, I was pretty sure that the young man and his grandmother had been roped into some kind of scheme. It wasn't until I saw him two weeks ago to hang out that I realized how inaccurate my assumptions were. Every few weeks they send him an instruction booklet that walks him through the steps of a particular technique or series of topics and includes a sheet for him to mail in a submission for evaluation. I was very impressed with the quality of the booklet and the credentials of the instructors cited. And what's even better, is that I can see how much Jamal has already improved.
During our last outing, we went to the Medical School library (it has a lot of quiet rooms) and watched a Batman the Animated Series DVD to search for the perfect scene or character to draw. He has told me before that he sometimes feels intimidated by me when we draw together because my picture tends to turn out looking more like the model we're using. I often remind him that I'm more than twice his age, and that I expect him to be a lot better than me 15 years from now. On this particular session, he did something he hadn't yet done. About 1o minutes into our project, he stopped working on his picture, peered over at my sketch pad, and asked "You see what you did wrong with her face?" I was actually getting a little frustrated with my picture when he brought it up, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that he had properly identified the problem. I had formed the chin on my villainess (word?) incorrectly, and it was in turn throwing off the relationships between all of her facial features. I made the correction, and the sketch ended up a lot better because of it.
I have been a casual artist since I was about 7 years old. My abilities continue to grow with age, but I have been buying books and materials over the past year and a half in an effort to accelerate my growth a bit. After flipping through Jamal's Art Instruction School Books, and observing his progress, I've decided to send off for that mail in art test. I'm not sure I want to drop $100 a month, but they do have a scholarship program, so maybe I can get a discount.