What I Learned From Doing Weekly Illustrations for 2 Years (And Why I’m Not Doing It Anymore)
After more than 100 illustrations, I'm sharing some of my lessons learned — and how you can expedite your own creative growth.
If you’re here for the product design content, this will be a slightly different kind of post. Still, I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful all the same!
Personal work follows a process similar to any other kind of creative project — you come up with an idea, figure out all the details, and see it through to execution. But the caveat with personal work is that you usually have to do all those steps and more by yourself, without help from anyone else.
So while the standard process might seem straightforward, that fact alone introduces a lot of challenges. It’s hard to decide what ideas to pursue and to stick with your creative decisions. It’s overwhelming to think about how much time to devote or how to manage it effectively. It’s easy to get discouraged throughout the process, especially if you run into obstacles. And if you manage to finish the project, it can be hard to share your work and feel confident about what you’ve made — or even to know how to talk about it with others.
I’ve experienced all these challenges (and many more!) in my creative career. But there’s one key practice that has helped me overcome the vast majority of these challenges: doing weekly personal work. For me, that took the form of weekly illustrations, which I’ve done each week for the past two years.
Over that course of time, I’ve seen my creative skills grow in ways that I never thought possible. I’ve built up a body of work for my portfolio. I’ve grown my skills a lot. I have a better idea of my artistic interests and goals. And I’ve had opportunities to work with clients who align with my values as an artist. Much of this — if not all — can be attributed to the weekly practice I’ve kept up.
Now, more than 100 illustrations later, I wanted to share insights into my process: why I decided to do it, how I’ve done it and maintained it, and how I’ve benefited from it. And while I won’t be doing weekly illustrations anymore (which I’ll also talk about), I still consider this practice to be one of the most impactful routines I’ve had in my career so far. That’s why I wanted to unpack it here, so you can replicate something similar for yourself — and reap the same benefits. Let’s get into it! 👇
How I started doing weekly illustrations
Over the last two years, my practice looked something like this:
Every Monday morning, I would share a new illustration that I had created. I posted the illustration across my social media (Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn).
By the end of each Monday, I had usually started on the next illustration. I kept a backlog of ideas handy so I could quickly pick one up without too much effort.
As the week progressed, I would continue working on the illustration in any pockets of free time I could find, like a few hours after work each day. Or, if I had a busy week, I’d spend more time on it on the weekend.
By Sunday evening, I would finish the illustration and prepare it for posting. Usually I would have an idea of what concept I was interested in pursuing for the following week, or I’d do some research before the week started.
At first, I tried experimenting with all kinds of subjects for my illustrations — landscapes, characters, food, whatever came to mind. Some were animated and others weren’t. But I quickly became overwhelmed with the number of options and decisions involved in figuring out what I should create each week.
That changed when I started to do series instead. By focusing on a few consistent themes, I could ideate quicker and focus more deeply on that subject matter. So I let my interests guide me toward what content I should pursue. As a result, I gravitated toward fields of design that had always fascinated me: interior design and character design. By constraining the creative scope in this way, I was able to spend more time learning, researching, and experimenting with whatever ideas I came up with — limited to those fields.
In addition to exploring these interests, I also wanted to pursue a goal: improving my skills. My area of focus is 3D illustration, and 3D is often described as having an “exponential learning curve” — for every new thing you learn, there’s a handful of other things you also need to learn in order to do the first thing well. There’s a lot of contingencies related to everything, so in order to become proficient at 3D art, you typically need to specialize and/or have a methodical approach to skill-building.
To do this, I brainstormed and decided on some short-term, specific goals that I wanted to accomplish:
Improving my 3D modeling skills
Furthering my artistic style and personal brand
Improving my ideation and concepting muscles
Growing my audience, networking online, and meeting new people in the industry
Pushing myself out of my comfort zone
Identifying these goals was an important exercise, as it made it clear (for me) what I wanted to gain. By coupling that with how I wanted to do it (with my interests guiding me), I set a clear direction for my personal work. That direction was key in motivating me to keep going with my practice long-term — if I felt discouraged, I could revisit my interests and goals and see how my efforts contributed to the bigger picture.
The takeaway from this is to use your interests and goals as a starting point before deciding on how often to practice your skills. List them out somewhere you can revisit frequently, so you can hold yourself accountable, keep yourself on track, and pick yourself up when you feel discouraged. This will also inform the means by which you accomplish those goals — the structure, frequency, and other points we’ll cover below.
What I gained from doing weekly illustrations
As Gretchen Rubin put it in her essay “Harnessing the power of frequency”:
“Getting started is always a challenge. It’s hard to start a project from scratch, and it’s also hard each time you re-enter a project after a break. By working every day, you keep your momentum going. You never have time to feel detached from the process. You never forget your place, and you never need to waste time reviewing your work to get back up to speed or reminding yourself what you’ve already done. Because your project is fresh in your mind, it’s easy to pick up where you left off.”
Skill-building is a nebulous thing. We’re often not taught how to do it effectively, and we blame ourselves when we don’t see progress fast enough.
What I’ve learned over the years is there’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach, but creating the right structure matters a lot. The easiest way to do this is to aim for regular deliverables — something that you’re committing to deliver, finish, and/or share, on a regular basis. I’ve found weekly to be the most effective frequency for this for several reasons.
(The best part about this approach is that you can apply it to any kind of skill: illustration, writing, programming, etc. Other skills might require more creativity with what deliverables you aim for, but the weekly structure will offer the benefits listed below.)
Benefit #1: It emphasizes hands-on application.
To illustrate this point, I wanted to share a personal anecdote:
I use Cinema 4D for my 3D artwork. I learned about the program years ago in college and had been interested in it ever since. But for the longest time, I would open the program only to feel too intimidated by the interface, tools, settings, possibilities, and information. I’d hurriedly close the program and then resign myself to trying again later. I’d tell myself that I’ll just watch a tutorial or read the documentation. Long story short, I didn’t learn to use the program until years later, when I finally committed to fighting through the intimidation and teaching myself.
Reflecting on this experience, I can now see that I was being naive about the learning process — thinking it’d be as clean or neat as someone teaching me everything I needed to know, so that I wouldn’t have to feel intimidated, anxious, or dumb.
The reality is that learning is messy. The intimidation and frustration never quite goes away; it only becomes more manageable as you improve your skills. And while there are tutorials you can watch and even classes you can pay for, with an instructor to teach you, the only way to truly learn is to practice hands-on application: getting into the program (or skill) and creating things.
Because this is the fastest way to learn a new skill, putting this at the center of your skill-building habits will ensure that you move forward reliably on your goals. It creates a virtuous cycle: you apply your skills in a hands-on fashion, and then you’ll start to feel accomplishment at what you’re able to create. Even if it’s not what you were hoping for, the reassurance of seeing something you’ve created motivates you to keep going.
Benefit #2: The weekly structure is more sustainable.
You might know of daily challenges, where the participants challenge themselves to complete one deliverable each day, whether for graphic design, a user interface, or an illustration.
I’ve done a few daily illustration challenges in the past. To this day, I still enjoy looking back on a month of work — 30 or so illustrations — and reflecting on how much that project contributed to my growth. It’s amazing to have so many pieces created in a short amount of time. But I think the cons of daily challenges outweigh the pros.
The daily routine quickly becomes exhausting, as it’s a lot of creative work to cram into a single day. If you work or go to school, it can be even more overwhelming to manage (if not impossible). And if you happen to fall behind, it’s not very forgiving, since you either need to play catch-up or skip a few prompts. All of these factors can damage your motivation and lead you to give up altogether.
On the other hand, I’ve also seen folks avoid any kind of commitment or timeline altogether. They might feel like they’re not ready to commit to a project, or they don’t know what kind of timeframe is reasonable for what they want to do. While this might seem like a better alternative, the lack of structure causes time to mesh together — and once you’ve finished your job or family obligations, you might not have much time left in the day. When this cycle is repeated each day, it’s easy to fall behind on your goals.
Structuring your time (to a healthy degree) is a crucial ingredient in moving forward on your creative goals. By creating and following a structure, you’re prioritizing your long-term growth over whatever whims might strike you each day — so that even if you feel unmotivated one day or hesitant the next, you have a commitment to uphold — even if it’s just for a little bit of time each day. Figuring out the structure that feels the most productive for you takes some trial and error, but that’s why I’d recommend the weekly approach as a starting point.
The weekly structure has the benefit of maintaining a defined yet forgiving timeline. You have more time to plan, think, ideate, and execute on your idea. You can put in some time each day after work, or you could spend time on the weekend working on it. You could choose to finish the project in a single week if it’s relatively small, or you could break each week into more manageable milestones that lead up to the larger deliverable. You can change course mid-week if your idea just isn’t working, and you can pursue something smaller with the time you have left. Or, if the week gets ahead of you, you can make the decision to pick it up next week.
In general, the structure allowed me more time and flexibility to make those kinds of decisions — which made a huge difference in keeping up the challenge over the long term.
Benefit #3: You can improve more quickly.
To the same point as the quote about frequency above, practicing consistently helps you improve faster than if you practiced less regularly.
To illustrate this point, here’s some fun “before vs. after” examples of how my own work has improved, thanks to the weekly illustrations!
Benefit #4: It forces you to get out of your own head.
While there are tons of other benefits besides these four, this one has been one of the most impactful for my own creative process.
When you’re on a weekly timeline, there isn’t much time for overthinking your ideas and work. You can’t tweak endlessly or second-guess yourself or kick the idea down the road and hope that you’ll get back to it later. Because you have a weekly commitment to yourself, you’re forced to pursue your ideas to fruition, even if you aren’t sure — and building this muscle benefits you tremendously as a creative professional. And even if you see your ideas through and it ends up being not what you were hoping for, it’s in a low-stakes environment and you’ll be able to reflect on your full process — rather than an incomplete picture — afterwards. Then, those learnings are easy to apply for the following cycle, only helping you improve more.
In spite of those benefits, there are a few shortcomings of the weekly structure that I’ve noticed over time that are worth keeping in mind:
It’s not the best for developing a patience for detail. The weekly projects prioritize breadth over depth, as you’re trying new things each week. It’s best for creatives who are just starting out and need to learn a lot. But as you get more experience, you might want to pivot to longer timelines, which afford more time for fine-tuning, detail, and nuance.
It can be tricky for bigger projects. If you decide to pursue a bigger project that doesn’t fit neatly into a week, you might have to break it up into smaller milestones. This can still work well within the weekly framework, but it does require more project management and planning.
It prioritizes creative stamina over creative endurance. Weekly turnarounds require shorter, quicker bursts of energy devoted toward projects, and it restarts each week. This is helpful if you’re trying to improve quickly and produce a lot of work, but it isn’t as helpful if you want to hone your skills to work on an ambitious project over a sustained period of time.
While these points are shortcomings of the weekly cadence, they didn’t deter me from starting and benefiting over the course of my time. They did become more prominent as I got more experienced, however, and after two years, I found myself outgrowing — and being limited by — the weekly structure. Which leads me to why I’m not doing it anymore.
Why I won’t be continuing with weekly illustrations
While this method has worked well for me over the past two years, circumstances can change. I wanted to unpack a few specific ones that led to me ultimately making the decision to pivot away from weekly illustrations.
I got a new full-time job
For most of the duration of my weekly illustrations, I had been in the same product design role. I was comfortable with my schedule and workload, and that allowed me more time to focus on my creative pursuits outside of my full-time job. But in the new year, I decided to leave that role and move onto a new one.
Finding a new job is strenuous. The phases of planning, researching, preparing, studying, and eventually interviewing are demanding on your time and mental resources. Outside of the time spent before or in the interview process, you’re also spending time transitioning out of your current role and onboarding into your new one. (My other articles dive into these phases more in depth: you can check them out here.) And as with any new job, you can usually expect the onboarding process to span 6 months or so before you really feel settled in — and I’m still in that right now! 😇
So in the spirit of being flexible with wherever my circumstances take me, I’ve shifted from the more rigorous weekly schedule to a longer-term project approach. That way, if there’s days I need to work late or if I’m especially tired after work, I can work on my personal projects only if I feel like it’ll be a leisurely creative outlet.
My creative goals have evolved
Toward the tail end of my two-year streak, I started picking up additional programs (Substance Painter, Zbrush, and Marvelous Designer) to complement my 3D workflow. These are programs that I’d always wanted to add to my repertoire, but never felt like I had the capacity to learn them, since I was missing vital skills from my base program (Cinema 4D).
So after spending those many weeks focusing on a smaller range of skills — modeling, composition, texturing, lighting — I finally felt more ready and equipped to take on additional skills and learning processes. My creative goals have shifted from focusing on the foundation to now adding new tools to my workflow, which is an exciting place to be.
With that evolution, I’ve had to adapt how I approach my personal work. I’ve found that the weekly cadence isn’t compatible with the caliber of work I’m now aiming for; I need more time to think through and develop details, to learn how to utilize other programs, and to bring my newer, bigger ideas to execution.
I took on more client work
One of my goals with the weekly illustrations was to grow my audience and meet more people in the industry. As an extension of that, I also wanted to get my portfolio and skills to a point where I’d be able to take on more freelance work — working with clients who appreciate my style and what I can bring to the table.
Taking on more client work in 2022 has meant that I don’t have much time to do personal work. As a result, I’ve had to restructure and rethink how I approach personal work, focusing on bigger projects intermittently instead of regular, consistent practice. And while this involved a transition period — productivity-wise as well as emotionally and mentally, with how I approach my personal work — I feel more settled in and excited about the side projects that I do have time to work on.
Overall, I wanted to unpack these factors to explain the other side of the weekly illustrations. Just as important as it is to set up a structure, schedule, and routine for improving your skills, it’s also important to be adaptable to change. By noticing new circumstances and adapting to those, you can ensure that your old habits don’t stand in the way of your new goals.
I’ve gained so much from my two years of weekly illustrations, which is why I’d highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in improving their own skills. If your circumstances allow for it, try it out! You’ll learn something along the way, about your craft and yourself, and grow as an individual and artist.
I hope you found this newsletter helpful! If you’re interested in reading more, subscribe here for free and share it with a friend. You can also find me on Twitter (@wontonface).
Really appreciate your insight on this subject. I'm looking to transition into a more senior industrial design role and have been trying to find the right approach to developing my portfolio. Weekly deliverables makes a lot of sense. Thanks!!