For a long time I drew the way you'd draft a contract: every line pre-approved, every color argued for in advance. The work was fine. Fine is a warning sign.
Rebirth was the first piece where I stopped trying to control the pencil and started listening to the flow. No underdrawing, no plan, no grid to fall back on. Each stroke committed to the one before it, and the piece became a record of what happens when you stop negotiating with momentum.
Rebirth isn't a soft start; it's a deliberate burn of everything. That's true of the drawing and it's true of the practice. What I keep from the old way is craft. What I burned was the permission-seeking.
If you're holding a pencil and waiting to feel ready: the readiness is downstream of the mark, not upstream of it. Make the first one ugly. The second one already knows more than you do.