In Cape Town we have super-changeable weather conditions.
A week or two back, it was misty and raining at my doorstep, but just 11km away — my destination for the morning — it was a peach of a day on the beach!
Needless to say, familiarity with local weather patterns is key here
Knowing what happens when the wind blows “a certain way” means you can plan the best days out (instead of moping at home).
And for you, here’s a similar principle: understanding one particular learning pattern will help you to get out and about with your cartooning ambitions.
Now, which cartooning learning pattern do I have in mind?
It’s this one: assignments that seem impossible on Monday feel easy by Friday.
(Actually, they are very do-able by Wednesday – just two short days after Monday – and by Friday they actually feel like joyous play).
From impossible to playful in 5 days: how can that be?
The thing is, when you’re faced with something new your brain has nowhere to start. There’s no background to kickstart it: no neural circuitry in place, no muscle memory. It’s quite common to think, “I physically cannot do this!” and to feel a bit freaked out — I can remember that sensation from my own early adult-accountant-learning-to cartoon days.
At the same time, your brain is built to solve your (cartooning) problems
And if the current ‘problem’ it sees is the fact that it can’t see how to do something, it’s going to put all its energy into finding a solution.
And our brains are built to recognise and even create patterns: yup, there’s that word again! So as you go tackle your allocated cartooning assignment each day, your brain is wrestling “the problem” to ground and figuring out a pattern to help it decode and deal with it fast and efficiently next time.
Because our brains are powerful “next time” is the next day…
… you go to sleep each night and your brain beavers away, knitting together all the loose ends of learning from your day, and lo and behold, when you wake up in the morning, you are more of a cartoonist than you were 24 house earlier.
Literally, you have new skills.
ing
So, how does recognising this learning pattern help you with cartooning?
It stops you from giving up. Instead of thinking, “This is impossible, I am clearly not cut out for cartooning,” you can change your internal monologue to something more open-ended.
Something like this:
“I’m not comfortable with this yet, but if I keep attempting the exercises, my short practice will deliver better results than I expect.”
That might sound like wishful thinking, but it’s not. How about someone’s actual words to reassure you?
Most recently, someone described it to me like this:
Day 1 “This feels so hard, I feel like I am going backwards.”
By mid-week “… not too bad.”
By Day 5: “Oh, this feels so much easier! 
😎”
If nothing else, latch onto the fact that your brain is designed to find patterns. Whether it’s weather patterns in Cape Town (pun intended) or out-thinking lions in the savanna, finding patterns is what keeps us all alive and having fun.
It’s a skill that your ancestors have clearly mastered!
And now it’s hard at work turning you into a cartoon-pattern-recogniser.
Pretty cool, if you ask me 😉