Return (Again)

The intensity of the first half of the year caught up with me. I had to stop. My mind and my body would

not start. So I gave up for a little while.

I spent a few days hospitalized, most of them in my own home through a special program. It wasn’t a terrible illness of anything like that, just an infection that wouldn’t heal after taking antibiotics. A fever had sent me to the emergency room.

I couldn’t heal because I was so tired, and so stressed. I had 5 months full of productivity in all aspects. But for that, I sacrificed rest. I also had a tough year at work. I was surviving. It’s not a good way to live.

This is not the first time in my life that stress sends me to the hospital. Fortunately, I was able to work from home and take time off. But the truth is, this experience, as before, makes me rethink my present.

The school year starts tomorrow, and I have been getting ready today. Time to wake up at 5am, and do 1,000 things a day. I don’t want to return to a hospital, so I will need to figure out how to keep going with my artwork.

For today, I tried to make up for some of the 16 drawings I missed. I thought it would be fun to do a few drawings of steps to draw the Magdalene’s face.

Here are a few basics.

Drawing a nose

Drawing a mouth

Drawing an eye

Basic lines for a face

A face with guidelines

Just like prayer, just like anything we do, we learn a formula, but it’s the feeling and imagination that fill the process with power and connection. We find our way and style as we practice. And then one day, we keep going and it becomes easy. Some processes take much longer than others. And other processed may not be for us. Now on to my 5th year in high school…