A love note to graphite

thank you Nicolas-Jacques Conté

One day, (many) years ago, I picked up a pencil and a cheap drawing pad, opened up one of my loved magazines about video games and anime, chose a drawing of a character I liked - I’m pretty sure it was Yu-gi-oh! - and tried to copy it as best as I could. I wanted to test the myth that drawing is a gift granted only to the special ones, and when I proved this idea wrong - my copy turned out quite well and I knew I was just a regular, average kid - I, naively, paved the future for the illustrator I would become one day.

I’ve changed a lot, though. I went to Arts university, where I experimented with new tools, I moved out to another country where I’m able to spend a considerable amount of money on professional paint and fancy brushes, and things I see other artists using and I instantly urge to try. I got older, and older people think too much which is a big problem in general, bigger if you want to draw like a child.

Life has made my creative journey a bit complicated lately, I guess this is to be expected every now and then, but how painful and slow has it been to come out of this? I’ve experience what everybody calls a creative block, knowing my creativity wasn't blocked at all, and still I wasn't able to sit down and make it work, I couldn't transfer the ideas in my head to paper even though I really wanted to, because I was dealing with the overwhelming feeling of loss, and I needed time. Time takes forever to pass when we’re hurt, doesn’t it?

However, looking back at this last year I feel like things are getting better and my mind is finally cooperating with my art life. I’m writing this floating outside of my studio window, watching my past self sitting on my red plastic Ikea chair, and even though many of these repetitive days seemed unproductive, I see myself slowly getting more comfortable and confident and I feel like I owe this, once again, to my pencil - and its graphite made family.

family picture, lots of members missing.

I can’t say I haven’t been frustrated while drawing this year, but I can say that simplifying things helped me a lot and just doodling on cheap paper was therapeutic. I feel like I found something mine while applying graphite on top of gouache just to see how it feels, I definitely felt more relaxed painting digitally the pencil drawings I made while tirelessly listening to the same music album for months and months.

I remember thinking a couple of times “it all starts with a pencil” while observing a finished illustration as if the shapes appeared like magic in front of my eyes. The same thought goes through my head as I draw the first lines of a Picture Book I have no idea how will turn out, but I trust the magic. I trust the pencil in the first place.

I should thank time too, but I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. Do you also feel like the last four or five years have been a tangled ball of wool?

finding a character.

In 2024 I spent a lot of time scratching white pages with magical pencils until something appeared, and I’ve got cool results at the end of these sessions. Not always, of course - I’m still just a regular, average kid after all. Happy New Year to you!

Much love,

Pat.