On social media, I see many people who have just started learning to draw saying they feel like they're not making progress and want to give up. They want to know what mindset other artists have and how they persist.
These contents led me to choose the topic of this article: The Evolution of Mindset During My Practice Stages.
I started learning illustration from scratch in 2017, and it wasn't until the middle of this year that I felt I was finally about to level up: I found my mindset changing automatically, with less doubt and more confidence. New visions and plans naturally appeared in my mind.
Now I can look back from a distance on the struggles, choices, and transformations I went through. I divide this process into three stages:
First stage: Wanting everything
Second stage: Settling in and trial and error
Third stage: Embracing new evolution
Photo by Pixabay
First stage: Wanting everything
My first stage was starting to learn drawing completely from scratch. I had never received any professional artistic training.
My mindset went through these changes.
Before starting to learn, I was overconfident and had unrealistic expectations: I thought I could quickly master skills, hoped to quickly develop my own style, be able to monetize quickly, and have a constant stream of clients.
I wished everything would happen quickly because I felt I had started too late.
I created some works by taking shortcuts through imitating styles and techniques, and after just a few months of learning, I started looking for clients in publishing and advertising.
Now I think monetization can be misleading for beginners. You can often monetize a little (rather than being completely discouraged with zero returns), making you feel this path works, but it's hard to achieve a real breakthrough.
After getting some orders, I entered an anxious phase. The anxiety stemmed from recognizing the gap between reality and ideals, and being unable to grasp the uncertainties.
First, I realized my skills were truly not refined, often needing much more time than expected to complete deliverables, easily leading to exhaustion.
Second, I realized that if you don't draw well enough, you can't find better clients or raise your prices, but drawing well takes a long time.
Besides this, choosing to become an artist carries other risks, such as whether you can develop your own style, and what if your style doesn't have a market? (I do tend to overthink) If you try for several years and still can't improve, you've wasted valuable time that could have been spent developing other career paths. These are all sunk costs.
How do people make choices with these uncertainties?
Now I think whether a person can continue practicing ultimately depends on their motivation.
Looking back, a core motivation that kept me choosing to continue drawing was: I could already see where my drawings weren't good, and I couldn't tolerate these flaws not being improved. I didn't firmly confirm from the beginning that I was a born artist; I just couldn't tolerate flaws like an artist.
I've met some artists, and everyone's motivation is slightly different. Some people hope their entire self can be seen and accepted, some hope to be extremely successful, and some never want to engage in any profession other than creation from the beginning. These motivations often appear alternately.
Only you truly know your inner motivations. Without a driving force that keeps you going, you'll likely quit someday.
Regarding skill acquisition, our motivation is primarily challenged by the uncertainty of when we'll achieve proficiency.
Early on, I often looked at successful artists' early works; some hadn't hidden their immature early pieces. I would see how many years it took them to evolve from one state to another, giving me some concept of my own progress. Seeing that their early works weren't that great either, I consoled myself that I still had hope.
In this state of coexisting hope and frustration, I entered a multitasking life: learning skills, taking orders, and working full-time. I told myself I needed to master as many soft and hard skills and knowledge as possible to have more choices in the future. In your 20s, there's always an inexplicable sense of urgency about running out of time.
Looking back I was a bit burnt out. At the end of 2019, I decided to take a break, from my full time job.
Second stage: Settling in and trial and error
This break took a bit longer than I planned because of the lockdown in early pandemic, giving me enough time to adjust my routine and mental state.
Having practiced for several years, I was no longer worried about giving up, and my confirmation that I would keep drawing grew stronger. During the pandemic years, my mindset was one of gradually increasing confirmation and decreasing anxiety.
I entered more self-reflection, facing those small thoughts that hindered my progress, such as impatience. Progress in drawing requires reflection, such as reflecting on whether I've resorted to old, unrefined methods in certain steps due to impatience for quick results.
To draw well and create your own style requires countless analyses and attempts, reflecting on and refining countless details. How to find and establish a style is beyond the scope of this article and I may write about it later, but in short, this process requires patience and absolute honesty with oneself.
I gave up control over completion time (which didn't reduce my productivity). Since I already believed this would be my lifelong career, spending a few more years building a foundation wasn't very long.
In this process, I accumulated more resilience.
Third stage: Embracing new evolution
These stages don't have a clear dividing line, but are guided by intuition.
This is my current stage. In the third stage, I began to experience some specific changes during creation.
One is the improvement in efficiency, being able to find ways to handle images faster, and a higher proportion of the drawings I produce are acceptable to myself.
Another is no longer relying on preparation, more easily entering a flow state. No matter how much procrastination acts up, the work time I complete each week doesn't fluctuate much, because drawing has become a habit.
With surplus mental capacity, I gradually developed the energy to reach out and connect with others, so this year I started practicing expressing myself on social media, sharing experiences and creative processes. I also gained more energy to showcase myself, seize opportunities, and accept setbacks. This month, I started revising my portfolio and actively seeking clients again.
Let's see how things go.
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