I’m starting some new illustrations this week for the Learning Science book. Right now i do not know how to do them. I have some ideas floating around, but am unsure if i can execute them, so i think i just need to dive in.
I find there is a pattern to these things: i start with divergent ideas, then try things out, before finally finding the ‘style’ for a particular book or project.
But there is another step: having found the style, there is still evolution, mutation, change. So if, for example, i have to do twenty illustrations, when i look back on the first five or six, i can see that they are still changing - or to put it another way, the first few are rarely good enough. In an ideal world, i would swap them out.
Use your sixty seconds today to consider the refinement of your practice.
Not the big, dramatic shifts, but that calibration and fine detail. Where you really master something.
Are you conscious of it - do you even have time to do it - and who judges you as you do so?
Day #520 - Refining Practice