Consistency isn’t Discipline and Sketching isn’t Consistent

I haven’t really “sketched” in a long time.

In fact, I haven’t really been painting or drawing at all recently. Anything that I have done has felt forced and frustrating.

You see, I hold an expectation for myself that I have to be consistent. I have to show the world that I’m constantly practicing and totally in love with my craft. I set an expectation for the kind of thing that I would like to produce, and then everything I do goes towards producing that one thing.

This is why I often find myself stuck.

When I set such a firm expectation for myself, I whittle down the number of things that I can actually take action on. I make action harder by limiting my options.

But consistency isn’t about picking something and just doing it every day out of sheer discipline. It’s about picking something that you want to become and then every day making all the necessary moves to become that thing.

Consistency can be misleading and hard. It seems like it’s a simple equation, but it’s really quite complex. No one can tell personally what makes consistency so complex because it’s unique to your own life. Only you can figure it out.

Consistently I lose sight of the fact that I’m able to do whatever I want to grow as a creator. That is my goal, after all, to grow as a creator. I tell myself that there’s only one path to get there and then quickly get bored and frustrated, but that’s just not the case.

Take sketching for example. In my head sketching is something that has to be done in the same style every day, under the same subject material. But the creative mind is so much more complex than that, It communicates through different styles and different subjects. One day it’s detailed and clean, the next it’s messy and fast. It all depends on what your mind body and soul have to say.

So don’t overthink it. listen to what you’re creative passions have to tell you and follow that voice. You’ll be surprised where it’ll take you.