Take a break, don’t be scared.

For the first time in my life, I took a vacation, a real vacation.

As a freelancer, I easily fall into the “if I don’t work today, my day will have been for nothing” spiral. By work, I mean my daily training, drawing, painting, writing my film scripts. The pressure I put on myself every 365 days of the year.

I have two one-and-a-half-year-old daughters, and with my wife, who is also independent, this year we decided to live.

Weird concept, isn’t it, deciding to live? Not so strange when you’re self-employed.

I was very, very afraid of losing my pencil stroke, my gesture, that the return to the blank sheet after a month without painting was filled with doubt.

What if I can’t paint anymore?

If I don’t ride a bike for 1 year, when the time comes, I won’t be afraid to get on one.

Yet I have this fear with painting, probably because Instagram shows me every day, every hour, every second that other people are making progress.

So what can I do to overcome this art block?

Simple!

The more I review my previous work, the more I notice my progress, and the more confident I feel about producing more.

I wanted to try a different kind of underpainting. Before, all my underpainting was done with oil pastels, but this time I tried gouache sticks, which dry quickly and are very practical to use.

When I was a kid, my parents used to dress me up in a bow tie on Sundays, which I remember well because I loved wearing it.

Without thinking, I was able to instinctively apply everything I’d learned with the red limited palette. As I painted, I got into the flow, into “trust the process”, and when I decided that this pastel stroke was the last one, I was satisfied.