I am a freelance illustrator. Above is a picture of my desk in a Co working spot in Alicante. Not a huge desk, but that's all I need to get my work done everyday. Why do I rent this space when I could just as easily set up a bigger desk at home and work from there? Why do I pay a monthly rent to leave the comfort of my home and work outside? Here's why...

To get here I have to get up, get dressed, and leave the house. I have to climb down a bunch of stairs, walk up hill for 10 minutes then downhill of ten minutes. Then I have to do the same to come back for lunch, and then return after lunch and then go back home when I'm done. I'm getting the juices flowing for at least one hour a day.

That's right, no bed to play that dreadful symphony that lulls you towards it all day. No fridge and food cabinets to get up and raid every time you crave to ruin your health. No interruptions.  Just you and your work. Funny how easy focusing becomes when there are no distractions around. I highly suggest that you watch this video by John Cleese and his philosophy on creating boundaries of space and time.

As opposed to those ninja turtle and bart simpson figurines staring at you all day long, you are around real, living, breathing, reproducing organisms. Reality? Check.

We crave to have more and more time, but the more time we have to do something, the longer and longer we take to do it (without necessarily improving the results). Over here, you know your time during the day is limited, and you have to perform in this time. On the other hand, at home time seems endless and it seeps into your sleeping time, eating time, tv time, nose digging time and so on. In my co working, the timings are 8:30 to 20:30 on weekdays. That's it, I have to do what I need to do within this time.

Now you can be home, relax on the sofa, watch tv, eat food, burp, fart, roll on the ground, do random handstands etc. You don't have that table sitting there calling you in that guilt enducing fashion every second.  This is no place for business baby.

It doesn't matter if you have got projects on the go or not. It doesn't matter how much work you have or how much money you're making. The fact is, you are getting up, getting dressed and going to work. This routine is an important one for you to feel that yes, you are contributing to society, and you are getting out here. Maybe its the good old caveman instinct of sharpening the tools and going out hunting. Whatever it is, it works.

Light bulb went out? Don't worry about it. Garbage day? Don't worry about it. All the maintenance is done for you, as the place is kept sparkling clean, because that's part of what you are paying for.  You just worry about what you need to get done.

Have a Skype meeting? Well guess what, you're dressed up in clothes, there is an office behind you with people working. This as opposed to those home Skype meetings in pyjamas with your mother cooking curry in the background. Co workings normal also have professional meeting rooms with projectors.

Ever since my lovely wife Elena had told me that she had to go to Brussels for an interview I have been excited to visit the Belgian Comic Strip Center. Located very close to the centre, it was a twenty minute walk from our hotel. As I arrived towards the Museum, I was greeted with a giant statue of Gaston Lagaffe, a character created by the great Andre Franquin.  The entrance to the museum itself is quite subtle and I missed it on the first go in my excitement! Entering it, it is filled with all sorts of great statues such as Tin Tin and friends on the moon and their actual rocket ship, Spirou, Asterix, the Smurfs and the  real 2HP Citroen of Boule and Bill. In short it is a comic lover's dream come true, specially those familiar with Belgian Comic Book artists such as Peyo, Herge and Franquin.

A chronological section is devoted to the evolution of the comic strip. On the left we have 'Jonas eaten by Whale' from 1299. Apparently Monks were doing comic strips long before anyone else was! Also in the gallery were great gestural sketches of wrestlers by Katsunika Hokusai and a real revelation to me was Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland by the great Winsor McCay. I was amazed by the large prints of this strip and stunned with their visual and narrative brilliance. I can now see what a profound impact this must have had on Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes.

Firstly, I didn't realise till recently that the Smurfs were a comic strip created by the Belgian artist, Peyo. Then as I entered his section in the museum I was bewildered by the amount of work the man has done. This includes Johan and Peewit, Poussy, Benoit Briseter, Johan L'ecuger du roy and Pied Tendre. What I was dumbfounded by was the improvement of his work from 1949 to 1959. In these ten years he transformed from just another artist you would see on deviant art to a legendary comic book artist. Motivation defined.  If in ten years from now I can create something like the smurfs then gosh! What more can I ask for?

What I didn't know about the Smurfs were how funny the three panel gag cartoons were! I didn't even know that you could tell such great jokes in only three panels. Again just amazed at Peyo's work. It seems like he hit on all cylinders when he did the smurfs. Such original characters and such great jokes and story lines, and a dreamy setting.  I also learn about the Black Smurfs, that were the result of a Smurf getting stung by a black fly that makes their skin black and they lose their vocabulary and get very aggressive. I'm not going to say anything about race here, but is it possible to avoid that topic?
All in all though the little statuettes of the Smurfs were super cute, especially the miniature piano and the clothes line with their pants drying :)

Marc Sleen was a prominent Belgian illustrator, little known the outside world (because publishers didn't think he would sell outside Belgium) but well love in Brussels. His cartoons display local eccentric characters in the way that Mario Miranda did.  Every city has a great cartoonist that really represents the culture of the city and it's characters and this was who Marc Sleen was for Brussels. Additionally,  He was  a Wild life enthusiast and constantly strived for animal's rights. What struck me the most in this museum was his preliminary work. He seems to have drawn the whole image in pencil in quite good detail and the drawn it again and inked it. This confirms something that my good friend Amin Faramarzian told me the other day, 'no good artist gets it right the first time'

And of course we have to have something about the current comic strip scene in Brussels! There was an exhibit on the new comic stip collective called 'Brus 2: Brussels in Shorts' and I was immediately drawn the cover by Stedho. I've put a few of his pencils up because I really like his work, and I also noticed that he doesn't really ink his work, rather blue pencils a rough and then goes over it neatly with a graphite pencil and then probably removes the blue lines in photoshop and adds colour. I really like the flow of his work. And then there is also the work of Kim, the gruesome story of a murdered prostitute visualized in quite a bit of detail. Though not a big fan of the story itself, I like the way it was told. Shockingly, the comic was not for sale in the shop!

This was a critical visit for me that really opened my mind to a lot of things. I'm super inspired by what I experienced. I've fallen back in love with the comic strip. I haven't been into comic strips for the last ten years or so but hopeful this has changed. Quotes such as 'A comic strip is born from the will of it's author' had an impact on me. I learnt about inking techniques, I learnt that you must study the results of others, but create your own unique technique. I saw the importance of creating rough work. I learnt about the importance of suspense in the last panel of a daily strip... and lastly I learnt anything is possible with focus, love, and dedication... and greatness takes time, there are no overnight results.