Creative Process: when a mess takes shape.

This has to be my first serious pencil drawing in more than a couple of years. Normally I just draw messy doodles that involve watercolors, and sometimes I draw zendalas. But as I explained in this post this post, I eventually stopped drawing stuff like this because I'm lazy and it takes me a lot of time.

I think I tried again after writing that post and looking at my old drawings, because I hadn't seen them in a while and I forgot they weren't so bad. And suddenly I wanted to feel the pleasure of the pencil in my hand trying to capture tiny details in faces and shapes that I adore. I think I like the process because it's almost sensual.

This time I didn't want to spends days drawing the same though, so I decided to make it more simple, with less details. Instead of spending 7 hours drawing only the lips, I drew the whole thing in 7 hours straight.

I didn't take pictures of the process because, as usual, I thought it was going to suck. Which leads me to the lesson I learned while drawing this lady.

I always think like that before starting anything. It's deffinitely going to suck, it's not going to work, I'm gonna fail, I can't do that, I'm not good enough, what's the point?

But because it had happened before, even if I did think like that, and I didn't take the pictures, I tried to shift my point of view a little bit from the beginning (only I don't trust myself enough, I thought I wouldn't even finish it.)

When I begin to draw anything, it always looks like a mess. It always looks awful, seriously. It looks like a 2 y/o is having fun with pencils. But this has always been like that, and I always see how the drawing begins to take shape. It slowly gets better until I stare at the thing and think "yeah it looks like I didn't draw this." So even when it looks cool enough for me, and I ACTUALLY DREW THE THING my mind goes "lol you can't be that good." It's not that I'm awesome, but before trying I never ever expect things to go well. So when they do go slightly okay I'm suddenly in shock.

It turned down good enough for me to actually like it. I had fun, the process was a pleasure. I speacially enjoyed witnessing the happening of the process, because seriously, it happens so slowly that at first it looked like it was never going to take shape.

And that's the thing, that's me in life. Always thinking the worst, sometimes not even trying. But I'm awesome enough that I proof myself wrong every time I do try, because not only I manage to do it, but I can be great at it. Everything can turn out great.

Even if in the beginning it all seems messy, even if I think it's not going to work, even if I want to give up before I even start, if I keep going, everything takes shape. Maybe painfully slowly, and maybe it looks like nothing is happening, maybe it'll look like I'm stuck. But I have to keep going. And in the end, who knows, I can have a masterpiece.

By the way, do you know who the woman from the picture is? If you do, leave a comment below. If you don't, also leave a comment below.

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It's really hard to believe in myself. Following the same train of thought, last week I entered @themarkymark Writing Prompt contest, being kindly invited by @geekpowered . At first I wasn't even going to write anything. At the last minute, the last day of the contest, I decided to write something. I was in the mood. At the beginning I had no idea what it was going to be about, I just wrote stuff. Once again, the story started to take shape very slowly. I didn't even know where it was going, I didn't know how it was going to end until I wrote the last couple of paragraphs.

It's really hard to believe in myself. In the end I liked it enough. I had poured myself into it, I was feeling like shit, and it was very intense and emotional. I thought it would be a mess, but it turned down okay. Even then, I didn't think much about the contest. There were really great entries. But I won the thing. _{I was so excited I almost cried, I still can't believe it, thank you.}

It's really hard to believe in myself. Seriously. It's a part of me that messes me up so much. It stops me from doing stuff, a lot. It gets me down all the time. And I work on it every day.

I feel I need to explain that everything I do, create, experience, EVERYTHING in my life, has some sort of lesson hidden in the process. Sometimes multiple lessons. Everything teaches me a lot about myself, about life and the Multiverse I live in. Which is why I'm sharing a simple drawing with you but at the same time I'm talking about what I learned in the process.

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I invite you to participate in this week's Writing Prompt. The theme is "You wouldn't believe what I caught Santa doing."

I will also invite you to dig into your creative process to search for maybe-not-so-hidden lessons. What does the process say about you? Who are you when you write, draw, paint, write codes, whatever? Who are you when you create?