Never Use Obligation as Motivation

It will only leave you discouraged as you practice sketching.

It will stunt your growth

I’m sure you’re familiar with those 30-day sketching challenges that people will do on social media. The pictures are perfect, with just the right lighting. Pens and pencils all lined up in an aesthetic way. Not to mention the sketches look way too good for a first try. I’ve tried this before, and I would never recommend anyone do it. It’s a waste of your time. Here’s why:

I thought holding myself accountable by announcing what I was doing on social media to be a good thing. That way, even if I don’t feel like practicing, I still have to and I’m forced to get better. After all, accountability only seems like a positive thing, right?

Yeah, but only if you’re trying to break a habit. Never if you want to build a habit or learn a skill. I would argue that the fewer people who know what you’re doing, the better.

I soon found out that posting regularly on social media became more about simply recreating those really nice sketches I’ve seen before, and not actually practicing. That’s because practicing requires that you make a lot of really ugly stuff before you make good stuff. But who wants to actually post their ugly sketches online? No one. Needless to say, it became frustrating pretty quickly. 7–8 days into the 30 days I already despised the work.

The most sobering part (and I didn’t figure this out until much later) is that no one even cares about what you’re posting. So not only was I doing something that I now hated, but for an audience of people who really couldn’t care less.

Practice when no one is watching

The fewer people that know about what you do, the easier it is for you to make mistakes. And that failure is your number one tool to getting better at sketching. That and actually learning from those mistakes. Then all of a sudden, a semester later, people look at how you sketch and obviously see the difference in the craft.

You can never replace genuine motivation. Obligation is just a cheap alternative that looks good on paper but is awful in practice.

Practice with your head down, and keep it a secret as long as possible. That is how you practice effectively.