I could sum up this week's newsletter quite quickly with the phrase 'consistency is key', but it would only provide value to you with the context.
I firmly put myself in the bracket of people who love to start things but never finish them. That's why I have a bunch of expiring domain names for business ideas that will never see the light of day, why there are countless draft files of half-finished art pieces on my hard drive, and why this issue of the Newsletter is a couple of days late. I struggle with remaining consistent on my goals, and as I mentioned in last week's Newsletter, I knew it would be a struggle to see this goal of mine through.
My idea of consistency was showing up day in and day out, never missing a day of working toward your goals. That was until I found a video by Matt D'Avella highlighting the two-day rule.
The two-day rule suggests: With whatever habit you're trying to build, only allow yourself to skip up to one day in a row. Quoting a European Journal of Social Psychology study: "Missing one opportunity to perform the behaviour did not materially affect the habit formation process."
Meaning you can still create the habits you need for success as long as you don't miss two days in a row. I love this strategy as it allows me to build a system to create forward progress but is flexible to allow the vagaries of life to enter.
This week I decided to work on my anatomy and build primary forms. Hands and faces are two aspects of the human anatomy I'm finding most challenging to get right, so I decided to work on some study sculpts. Nothing fancy, but with repetition, I'll soon be able to sculpt the human form with little reference. This piece isn't complete as you can see there isn't any tertiary detail included, just primary and substle secondary forms. But done is better than perfect. It took me an hour to sculpt the structure of the hand after much trial and error.
Looking back on the first couple of Newsletters, I figured the Advice and Lesson blocks both provided similar value but also limited the boundary of what I could actually write about. Setting limitations and boundaries can often be beneficial to help keep momentum confined to a specific topic, but I've felt it a lot more of a personal burden than it was a guide. Moving forward, I've decided to remove them from this constraint and instead adapt all future Newsletters to the following flow:
The resource is a new addition that I feel will provide much better value in terms of helping your growth as an artist and creator. For this weeks resource, I decided to share the video of the two-day rule. I hope it provides you with as much clarity and direction toward your goals as it has done for me.
That's it for this week!
See you next weekend.
Adam.
