I’ve got an addiction. I love tutorials. I love tutorials so much, I think I’ve watched at least 20 tutorials on how to make tutorials. *Ahem* But since I’m an artist; I love art tutorials the most.
Art tutorials are like my crack. I think about all the things I can learn and go down a deep dark rabbit hole of despair in subjects like “ How to make your line art straighter” Or “Why your art sucks” Great ideas right? Who wouldn’t want to know why their art sucks? I mean, it’s not like we all don’t secretly hate our work most of the time and keep a steady flow of balled-up paper piling up over an overflowing trash can in some random corner of our #studios* (see last blog post).
The problem is, it’s a trap. It’s a sequence of events all stemming from personal insecurities and imposter syndrome. I can’t tell you How many videos I’ve watched since youtube became a thing. And that’s probably too many.
Dryland swimming, which is the title of this post, translates to simulating an experience without actually participating. You see these process videos and end up seeing the results and you feel like WOW, that’s a thing, a thing I just saw… “o_o” Somehow, someway you feel you’ve been a part of it. There’s a rush to seeing something so awesome that you wish you could do. And sometimes, (we do) but most of the time we keep bingeing. Because now that feeling has become a fix we just need, a sort of hunger you can’t satiate.
“It is our thirst to ever become better that we find ourselves always overly evaluating and analyzing our own work. We never just go with it and move on to the next one we should. Because there will always be a next…”
- Quote: Jeremy Thomas – 10/17/2020
Ideas to think about:
- Try and remember that what you feel after you watch a tutorial is just a fleeting feeling that isn’t really yours. It’s borrowed energy. I say energy because it’s basically your attention. And your attention to anyone subject is finite.
- Keep your mind fixed on the feelings you’ve had about a piece you felt was your best work. I mean your ( work you couldn’t believe you made yourself) Take 10 slow and deep breaths and imagine what the process was, how an experiment paid off, or my favorite is when you feel nothing around you and you are just in that moment of deliberate motion without stopping the flow