I have to confess something. It feels so silly to admit this, and as you read it you’ll probably agree that it really is silly. My greatest fear in life right now is simply picking up a pencil and drawing a picture.
I decided that for a handful of reasons that I’ll likely go into in a future blog post, that I want to produce all the art for my game myself. To that end, I need to level up my drawing ability and produce a lot of art. The game I’m making is very art heavy, with loads of monsters, characters, and other set pieces that populate the game. My skill level is such that I can produce everything I need, but it will almost always take quite a few more practice attempts, drafts, and touching up of my work than a seasoned pro would. That means that to be successful I really need to be drawing every day as much as I can. The problem is I’m terrified of picking up that pencil!
I think a lot of you will know what I’m talking about. You’ve want to start something new. You know you can do it. All you need to do is just start and you’re probably most of the way to completion of the thing from that point on. Yet, because your own mind can be your worst enemy you find it to be a terrible mental challenge to just start it. That is what I’ve been going through. I’m afraid to put pencil to paper, because what if that one drawing isn’t good enough. What if my drawing looks bad. The thing is, it probably will at this stage, but that doesn’t even matter. It shouldn’t bother me, but it does and it is very difficult to push past that.
To help with this problem I’ve decided to try to implement The Two Minute Rule. I won’t go into detail about how the two minute rule works since there is so much already written about it. I’ve linked a couple of articles on the topic below. My goal is to simply draw for a minimum of two minutes every day. I even put a reoccurring appointment on my calendar for 2pm to remind me each day.
I will update in the future to let you know how well this new strategy is going. So far I have felt really good about it. Not only are my drawing sessions generally a lot more than 2 minutes, I just don’t feel as much pressure from the sense of obligation to draw and it is easier just to start.
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