Rules That I WILL NOT Make During My Coloring Journey

 So I'm a colorist now, it's all very exciting, and as I mentioned in my first post about it, one of the reasons I'm trying to get into adult coloring books is to help myself create without expectation of perfection. And I wanted to elaborate a little bit on that.

Because I am not a "perfectionist" by traditional standards. I have never been one to go back and correct mistakes until I have reached perfection. In school, I tended to write an essay, do a quick proof read for spelling and grammar purposes, and then just turn it in without further thought. I was not good about going back and making edits to the content itself. When I paint, I don't go back for a second layer or to touch up lines. I fill the canvas once over and then it's done. 

But I am a perfectionist in another way, if perfectionist is even the right word to describe it. I have a tendency to create arbitrary rules for myself in everything I do. I don't really know how else to explain that, so I'm just going to provide a list of rules that I would probably make for my coloring if I hadn't decided not to make rules for it, as well as what kind of pressure this puts on me in the process of creating and the result it would probably have.

1. Complete every coloring book in order. Color the first page first, and then make your way through the book. This is a kind of rule that comes up a lot, because I always want to do things in order. But what would probably happen in this scenario is that I would come across a picture that I didn't particularly want to color in that book, and instead of just picking a different picture to color, I would just stop coloring in that book. Because I wouldn't be able to bring myself to break the pattern, and break my own arbitrary rule. So instead, I will be coloring whichever picture I feel like it, in any order.
2. Use the same medium and/or color scheme throughout this entire book. I also love it when things match, and a couple of the books I bought are almost like a story, and it could be that it's the same characters throughout the book, so it is very likely that I would attempt to make it all a cohesive piece. But my attention span is very small, so it is very probable that I would get bored of using only the same colors every time, and once again, I would stop using that book. Because once again, I would rather stop using it than break my arbitrary rule. 
3. You must complete a page before beginning a new one. This will be very hard for me to not do, just subconsciously. The obvious downfall of this one is the same as the others. I would find myself coloring a picture that I'm not enjoying, and when I don't want to finish it, I won't start another one instead and leave that one not completed, so once again, coloring is over. I think I will make an active effort to avoid this by going into some drawings with the intention of not completing them. Maybe I will choose a page with lots of small elements and just color one of the small parts. Or maybe I will pick a page where I really only like one of the flowers, for example, but I don't care about the rest of the image and then just color that one flower. 

There are more rules I could come up with for sure, but I think you get the point. Essentially what happens is that once I do something twice, I've created a pattern. And once I've created a pattern, I have a very hard time breaking from that pattern.

A good example of that is that when I started high school, I went to lunch on the first day to find that they had run out of plates, so I used a bowl for my lunch instead. And then on the second day, they were out of plates again, so I used a bowl again. And then the next day, they did have plates available, but I had already used a bowl for my lunch twice, so I proceeded to eat my lunch out of a bowl for the next four years. 

And this time, I am determined to not form a pattern, and I am very curious to see what kind of impact that has on my hyperfixation experience.