Thanks for taking the jump to read today’s newsletter. If you landed on this page by accident, subscribe to the Vanilla Beans Newsletter here.

Thanks for your patience last week.

When I’ve worked so hard to launch a new teaching system, it’s nice to have the space to tell folks about it.

And after all, this is a free newsletter from a coloring instructor, so it’s not shocking that I take one issue to advertise myself.

Anyway, more about that later. First, let’s get to today’s lesson…

A NEW TRACK

Two weeks ago, we talked about the serious downside to taking a break from coloring.

In today’s me-centric world, people love to talk about self-care, detoxing, and manifesting… so I know I annoyed more than a few people when I warned you about vacations.

The Me-Me-Me’ers say time off is good.

But that’s not how art works.

The only way to keep your coloring skills is to use your coloring skills.

If you’re not using ‘em, you’re losin’ ‘em.

I don’t make the rules, that’s just how the human brain functions.

You color a simple heart or a smiling banana and you think “that was easy”, not realizing the incredibly complex series of neural synapses which have to fire in just the right way to get your hand to do what your hand just did.

Artistic skill is NOT natural.

You’re doing something amazing every time you pick up a marker.

Your dog may be smart but he can’t color. Coloring proves you’re a freak of nature.

In a lot of ways, art skills are like a train, chugging down the tracks.

It takes a lot of energy to get the train moving but once you’re up to speed, it doesn’t take a lot to continue learning and progressing.

You can stoke the engines for rapid growth or you can coast for a while, but the tracks keep you going in the right direction and momentum drives you forward.

Except when you stop. Then you’re stopped.

And there’s no parking break— so once you stop, you’ll roll backwards a bit.

I'm about to kill the train metaphor so here’s that blunt reminder again:

You can take a break or a vacation but while you’re gone, your art skills will atrophy.

If you’re gone long enough, some skills will disappear entirely.

Now disappearing skills sounds like a really, really, really bad thing.

But is it?

Because a lot of you hold your colored pencils with a death grip. Believe it or not, your super-human hand strength is a skill.

Some of you use ten times more ink than you should. Your excessive diligence is skill.

And every single one of you has one tired old color combination that you use all the freakin’ time. If it’s a day ending in Y, you’re coloring that leaf with a Limepeel pencil.

Call it a rut. Call it a quirk. Call it your comfy-cozy zone where you color mediocre stuff on autopilot.

I don’t know about you but I want to atrophy the heck out of my bad habits.

So yes, if you take a break, you’re going to lose some skill. But that may be a good thing because your worst skills are holding you back.

Sometimes you need to reboot your brain— shutting down completely and waiting for the memory banks to clear before plugging back in.

When you come back from your break, you’ll be a different person. You might have a different grip, less picky-perfectionism, or a new love of Apple Green.

And it’s not anything you did to change, it’s what you didn’t do.

You stopped doing the bad thing long enough to stop always doing the bad thing.

Your train is on a new set of tracks.

We talk about practice like it’s the solution to everything.

And honestly, that attitude comes straight from the professional world. In art school, practice was all the professors talked about. The average class required 35 drawings a week and that was 35 PER CLASS, not 35 total.

I practiced my little fingers off.

But time and experience have taught me that there are problems practice can’t fix.

I seem to attract the kind of students who want to practice all day, every day. I give an assignment and 24 hours later, they’ve colored it 17 times.

Repeating the same mistake 17 times? That’s definitely a skill.

Sometimes the answer is a hard reboot. New train tracks. Time away.

Not practicing.

If you’re beating your head against the wall, take a vacation, even if you don’t go anywhere.

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GOODBYE, WORKSHOPS

If you haven’t driven by in a while, Vanilla-Workshops.com is no more. That’s the big change I’ve been telling you about, the thing that’s keeping me awake at night, and it’s the system I’m working so hard to replace.

Now here’s the thing…

If you’ve purchased a class at Vanilla-Workshops at any time in the last 15 years:

Teachable isn’t guaranteeing forever access anymore. I’m paying a hefty extortion fee to keep your classes alive for another year. But I can’t afford to do this forever. The cost of keeping your 20 minute cupcake class from 2011 available forever will put me out of business.

If you bought a workshop, MPF, or CP+, get in there before December 2026 and do the class!

Download the materials. Watch the videos. Improve your skills to the point where you don’t need me anymore.

Because the learning was the point, not the cupcake… right?

Right???

WHERE ARE THE WORKSHOPS GOING?

Join me at my new coloring school. Monthly memberships are reasonably priced and give you access to a wide range of intermediate to advanced lessons, new livestreams, and an amazing support network.