So if you talk to yourself, what do you say? Me? I beat myself up or go on about everyone else is a nudnik. Buddha’s rules for social media that speech should be kind, true, timely and useful eliminates 99% of my self talk and most of my speech. Figuring out what to say to oneself is even harder than talkiing to others.
Meditation isn’t just emptying the mind. The mind is a garbage can that fills itself right back up again. Meditation is directing the mind to pay attention to one object. Self-talk is used to direct the mind towards what you should be paying attention to. This is called verbal fabrication used right it puts you into to control of your mind. and to name what the body is experiencing as you direct your attention. Meditation isn’t emptying the trash, it is building a peaceful house to live in.
Meditation is like drawing and a craft, in this case applied to your mind.
Once you realize that right speech eliminates the crap in your head what exactly do you apply the speech too? This is where it becomes important to learn the craft, figure construction, storytelling, composition and design. Often this involves study of other artists and understanding what exactly you are swiping from Jack Kirby. It’s easy to just stick Kirby Krackle and shoving big hands at the camera in your own work and claim that’s Jacks craft.
By being able to learn techniques you can apply them to what you are trying to do. I’m studying Peter Arno (an old New Yorker cartoonist) to see how he stages a scene. If I can put labels and define his work with words then I can encourage myself to use that to focus on.
Analyzing work not just copying it as a way to do things makes it easier to repeat and think about it. Not that I’ve figured out how to do this very well as I work on it. It’s fun to do things (draw, meditate) it’s much harder to learn how to take things apart and see how they are working.