At seventy I thought I knew the plum. At eighty I learned there are five stations between seeing and drawing, and you must pass through all of them in sequence.
What you're looking at
Five states arranged in a path that moves left to right across the top, then descends and returns left along the bottom. The cycle begins with Looking and ends — if you are fortunate — at Knowing, which is filled green and drawn with a heavier line. There is one exit (green arrow, "the line is right") and one long red return path from Drawing back to Looking when the line fails. Most of your time is spent on that red path.
Why I drew it this way
The horizontal top row must come first because those three states — Looking, Forgetting, Remembering — happen before the hand moves. I placed Drawing lower and to the right because it is the descent into the physical act, and Knowing to its left because knowledge lives closer to the beginning than to the end. The red return arrow is long and travels the outside edge because walking back to the plum branch after a failed line is the longest journey in the diagram. I considered placing Knowing at the top right as a summit, but that would be a lie: understanding sits quietly beside the act of drawing, not above it.
What it argues
Mastery is not the absence of the red arrow. Mastery is the decreasing interval between Drawing and Knowing — the time it takes to see that the line is wrong, and the willingness to return to Looking without bitterness. The green arrow is narrow because it happens rarely. The red arrow is the diagram's longest line because it is the actual path of learning.
What I left out
I did not include a state for "Thinking About Drawing" or "Planning the Composition." These are forms of delay. The hand must move before understanding arrives. I also left out any state between Knowing and Looking — there is no "Celebrating" or "Resting." If the line is right, you are already looking at the next branch.