Dear ADs, I have this "if I can't finish this in one go, it's a failure" attitude that makes practicing drawing difficult for me. It's like, at some point I run out of energy, decide there's nothing that can be done, and just abandon it. I really want to improve my skills, but it seems I'm stuck. Is there any way to overcome this approach, and a way not to "run out of my spoons" so quickly?
That seems like a pretty arbitrary obstacle. In “one go” is not really a period of time. Is “one go” one day? one hour? is it variable? Is it just that you can’t find a way to return to a piece once you’ve walked away from it no matter how long you spend on it? It sounds like you think a piece of art has to be a exhausting marathon, when it can just as easily be a number of sprints. My guess is that you’re exhausting yourself trying to get it done in one sitting, and that memory of exhaustion, the pain of forcing it, is what becomes the negative association that stops you from being able to hop back in and work on it again.
So do this: Set a timer when you start working on a piece. An hour or two max, something less than you usually try to work in one sitting. When the timer goes off, you walk away. NO CHEATING. Walk away and do something else for at least as long as you worked on the piece. Maybe even wait until the next day before you start again. You’ll really want to keep going when the timer goes off, because you’ve trained yourself to marathons, and you won’t be exhausted yet, but what we’re training you for now is short jogs. Pleasant jogs that don’t leave you with blisters so bad that you can’t run again the next day. You’re going to learn how to run pleasant jogs and short sprints and maybe even a power walk or two. The lack of mental “blisters” these periods don’t form will allow you to pick up the work again later without so much distress.
Forcing creativity when you must is part of being a professional artist, BUT you should engineer your ideal work style to minimize forcing it. That way when you really NEED to pull a marathon for a commission or a deadline, you know you can, and you don’t already have too many blisters built up to do it.
—Agent KillFee
