How I realized that being a painter was not what I wanted to be.

I hope every one of you are having a very nice night!

Tonight I want to share with you a little fragment of the biggest epiphany I've had in my entire life.

As you guys could have guessed, I was totally sure about what I wanted to do in my life since I was a little kid. I've always had this artistic interest and kind of the ability for it, according to my age.

It's funny to say it right now, but there's one thing I do can remember from when I was a kid, and it's my constant answer when people asked me the classic question: What do you want to be when you grow up?

"An artist", I used to reply without hesitation.

I promise you guys that was the only acceptable answer for me in that moment. And it still was... until 2 weeks ago.

I had this non-official job that consisted in handpainting clothes. T-shirts, denim jackets and even skirts.

In this post you can see some of the pictures of the making process of one of them. They asked me for a lion. A very realistic lion. "And give it a crown because he's the king, you know?", they said.

So I was like okay, I can do it.

And I did. But the process was not as enjoyable as it was when I painted in my own studio. I started to feel tired, and kind of annoyed by the orders of my bosses.

I handpainted several pieces of clothing like this one, until I started to hate going back to work with these people.

It was so frustrating. I remember myself thinking "this was supposed to be the job of my dreams. They pay me for painting cool stuff!".

But okay, it's actually different to paint things when you have your direct client peeping over your shoulder the whole time.

And saying to you "no, I don't like that color. Change it" when you just finished your painting and now you have to basically paint everything again but now using different colors. And that exact same thing happening at least five times a day.

Then I considered how much they paid me, that was basically "nothing" but with a cherry on the top.

That was the moment I started to realize that maybe paint things was not exactly what I dreamed to do.

People used to tell me that being an artist was a very tough profession, I think that's the common belief no matter what country you live in.

And specifically in Venezuela, wanting to be an artist is like committing economic suicide for your future self, at least if you want to be a traditional artist who paints pictures and sell them (that was exactly my original plan...)

(But I think it's not anymore)

That's why I'm 100% confused right now and I don't know what to do anymore. So I think I'm going to follow my heart and rediscover myself and the things I like, hoping to find a new way of making art but not in a traditional way.

I've always liked illustration, and 3D modelling, with all the professions those could imply.

Maybe I'm giving up on the only profession stuck in my head for the past two decades, but this same closure opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities.

There's so much things I could be that also requires artistic knowledge and abilities. Art has so many ways of representation. From selling pictures in a gallery to even modelling characters for a video game.

So I take this ending as the beginning of a new story for me :)

Thank you so much for reading and staying until the end!

All the pictures and artworks in this post belong to me.