What irregularity there is in my posts on this blog!
I haven’t published anything here since my January post. However, I hadn’t put any pressure on myself because my responsibilities to my Grandmother are still so time-consuming.
And then I decided to start again and go slowly (and in French song, apparently…).
Of course, despite everything, I had planned to grab the nettle and start my career again with a bang.
Or at least, to do as much as I could to get things moving again.
But nothing went according to plan and I decided to accept a slow (and apparently sing-songy) restart.
I tried to find equivalents to the French songs in my original post. But if you have any others to suggest, don’t hesitate, I’m curious!
Restart slowed down : the liberating power of slow art.
In January, I told you that I was finally picking up my pencils and brushes again after a year and a half with my right arm blocked due to retractile capsulitis.
Since I’d lost a lot of time on the artistic and professional fronts, I had to run to catch up: draw, take care of the shops, my portfolio and so on.
Of course, nothing went according to plan (and right now I’ve got that Corpse Bride song stuck in my head)… I’m still insanely behind with my work.
Oh dear!
After making good progress and almost catching up on everything I’d done, I found myself faced with a number of obligations just as I was about to embark on my new projects.
So my restart was slowed down: what if it was a good thing ?
Was I about to discover the liberating power of slow art?
Restart slowed down: No liberating power of slow art at first but Maximum frustration
Like Perrette and her pot au lait in Jean de la Fontaine’s famous fable, I imagined success coming to me, optimistic as I was that my list of overdue tasks would soon be reduced.
Everything was going smoothly and I felt lighter, I was over the moon.
Just think!
Two years of backlog caught up in two months of hard work, that’s great isn’t it?
I was on a roll, a long way from the liberating power of slow art.
A promising start
I had every reason to be proud of myself:
- Accounting up to date
- Blog article posted
- Newsletter relaunched
- Daily drawing sessions
- Social networks updated
- 1st Studio Vlog YouTube video being edited
- Business plan redesigned
- Boutiques updated
- Projects flattened
- Retro-plannings designed and detailed on Notion
- etc
Obviously, as I’m not a character from La Fontaine’s Fables, instead of dreaming of calves, cows, pigs and broods, I told myself that celebration time (that’s it, the song’s in everyone’s head) was approaching and that I was finally going to move forward in my career:
- Creating new designs for my RedBubble shop
- Creating new illustrations for my Portfolio and my Etsy shop
- Write new articles
- Publish new YouTube videos
- Paint live on Twitch
- Approach potential clients with a well-targeted portfolio
It was enough to make you dream.
But alas, alas, alas, I had forgotten that an expertise scheduled for my home would inevitably slow me down.
Cancellation and Frustration: Goodbye Calf, Cow, Pig
I won’t go into too much detail, but let’s just say that we’ve had major problems with our house for almost 3 years now, and that’s taking up a lot of our time and energy.
In short, between preparing for the meeting (cleaning and gardening to the hilt), receiving a dozen or so people for the legal meeting, the additional documents to be provided by the deadline, the counter-arguments to be written for the lawyer…
All this on top of my grandmother’s care, so my work took a back seat.
Goodbye Calf, Cow, Pig!
Moral and physical exhaustion. Retart slowed down : what if it was a good thing?
Once the last documents had been sent and the last counter-arguments written, I thought I’d be able to resume the rhythm I’d maintained over the previous months.
Unfortunately, with a whole month devoted to problems at home and the progress of my Grandmother’s illness, I was once again behind on the professional front.
So what could I do?
I tried to get back on schedule, to get back on track, by drawing a lot, while editing the video, while feeding the networks… while managing the progression of my grandmother’s illness (Alzheimer’s is a complicated and exhausting disease for carers).
Then all of a sudden: bang.
All gone.
Exhaustion, tears, burn-out.
Of course, all this was to be expected.
If I’d seen one of my friends dealing with so many anxiety-provoking things at the same time, I’d have warned her and sensed the burn-out was coming.
But you know how it is, it’s always easier to help others than yourself.
Restart slowed down: a chance to discover the liberating power of slow art
At the bottom of the hole, deeper down (it’s definitely a Juke-box article today…) just like ina swimming pool, you have to touch the bottom to give it a big kick and get back up.
For months, even years, I’d been drinking the cup to lower the level in the hope of getting a bit of air.
Of course, I was exhausted trying to manage everything.
Certain obligations cannot be denied or brushed aside:
I can’t bury my head in the sand when it comes to house problems, I can’t abandon my grandmother, I can’t leave my partner to manage the house alone on top of his time-consuming freelance work.
So do I have to give up my job and my projects to stay in good physical and mental health?
No.
But I can see this situation as a good thing and discover the liberating power of slow art.
The liberating power of slow art : Cancelling plans to breathe
Of course, I’m not going to earn any money or contribute to my pension (which doesn’t exist anyway, as I studied for a long time and had a lot of precarious jobs in the cultural sector before returning to illustration).
I’m lucky enough to have a partner who earns a decent living for the two of us, and to have few needs (here, no Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney or ‘trendy-thingy’ channel subscriptions; no ski holidays, no cinema or weekly restaurant…).
We neither want nor need them.
Earning a living is important for my self-esteem, to be able to fund more personal projects, for my retirement, but if I can’t… well, I can’t.
Before I collapsed, I had resumed my daily drawing sessions and had suffered from seeing how rusty I was.
I would have liked to spend whole days painting or drawing, but the deadlines I’d set myself at work meant I didn’t have that creative time.
Unable to meet these deadlines, by postponing or cancelling the projects I’d set myself, I’ve finally found some space again.
Space to rest, first of all, despite the continuing obligations, but also to spend days painting or drawing if I have the energy and inclination.
There’s nothing like it to unwind, to rediscover your line and the joy of doing your job.
Mine is to draw, but I didn’t draw any more.
Cancelling plans to breathe and create : The liberating power of slow art
So I’m back to sketching for myself.
There’s no purpose to it, other than to reacquaint myself with my pencils and my watercolours, and perhaps to play around with other mediums I haven’t touched in a long time, or even to discover new ones.
So I finally took the time to try out the Pentel I bought myself in November 2024. I hadn’t even taken it out of its packaging yet!
It was the perfect time to get to know it.
So I put up one of my favourite works by Monteverdi and launched Pinterest by simply entering ‘16th century’ in the keywords.
My first attempts were not conclusive, but I ended up rediscovering the sensations I used to feel as a teenager when I dipped my brush in Indian ink to draw for hours straight.
The joy and pleasure of my job came back to me.
I wouldn’t say that I’d lost it completely, but my professional obligations were nibbling away at my creativity.
To promote my work and the existence of my online shops, like every artist in the 21st century, I’m obliged to play the game of hyper-communication via social networks.
To surf the algorithm, stay visible to your followers and reach new people, you have to post, a lot, often, on as many platforms as possible, be everywhere, all the time.
You have to keep defragmenting and stretching yourself like a layer of very thin butter trying to cover a much too large slice of bread.
Of course, I’m trying to meet my public, to find my ‘niche’ as they say in the industry, but if that means killing my creativity, what’s the point?
What’s the point of sharing everything if, in the end, there’s nothing left to share?
liberating power of slow art : Just Create !
I decided that the best answer to all my professional worries would be the simplest: Draw for myself and share what I do if I do something and especially if I feel like it (if what I’m doing is worthwhile too).
And if I have nothing to say or share: keep quiet.
This will prevent me from wearing myself out and having an ugly Instagram feed, while allowing me to get back to my world, to who I really am, to the reasons why I’ve always painted and drawn.
Reconnecting with my secret garden and nurturing it will give me more things to say.
And all of this will be to everyone’s benefit:
I’ll be more fulfilled, my drawings will be richer, more technically and artistically interesting and my clients will receive more quality up the line.
So, so be it, maybe you won’t hear from me for a while, maybe the algorithm will forget about me, but when I come back I’ll be truer to myself than if I’d conformed and exhausted myself playing a game whose rules don’t suit me.
If you, too, feel that you’ve lost your way a bit in this frantic race for production, for a presence on the networks to develop your business, don’t hesitate to share your experience in the comments. I’d be delighted to read that I’m not the only one who’s pulling out all the stops to LIVE rather than survive.
And in this world of hyper-productivity, where AIs are taking our jobs away and depriving us of the passion to create, this seems to me to be all the more essential.
Let’s not race with the machines, let’s show what makes Art worthwhile: the time and space we devote to it.
Take good care of yourself in this sick sad world, and see you soon for new illustrated dreams.