Jumping Hurdles to Escape Enemies and Gain Allies
April 22, 2017 Uncategorized 0 comment ahebert17
I’ve considered giving up writing and drawing many times. I have unfortunately given up both before and it took quite a long time to get back into it. I faced enemies when showing people my works.
Not everyone is going to see the same things that I see when drawing and think “that’s cool” or “beautiful” but when someone looks at my works and just nods without any recognition, it hurts. Or when someone is reading a piece I wrote and they start to made all kinds of comments telling me I should do this or that or change this and add that because they think it’ll be better.
News Flash, it’s not their piece, it’s mine. Enemies are everywhere for me, in the arts like writing and drawing the enemies that appear are usually in the form of a critic.
As for allies, there is a great deal. Family, friends, teachers, coworkers, and even random social media people that comment with a stereotypical emoji portraying their feelings. But let’s be honest, it’s 2017, who doesn’t do that nowadays?
Allies are great because they always give compliments or express the awe they feel when admiring a drawing or after reading a written piece. Physical excitement and enjoyment is what I strive to get as a reaction when people see my drawings and or read my writing pieces because it’s a story, it should at least make you feel something. If you’ve read a story or looked at a picture and it didn’t make you feel something clearly you aren’t in the right story or haven’t found the art you’re looking for. (But that’s just my opinion).
When I gave up on writing I had the worst writers block. It’s like a cage locked around my brain and the words just don’t form how I want or I can’t comprehend on how a simple line should be put. A shackle was put on my words. So when I finally was able to get back into it I went back to all my other pieces that were unfinished and added and added to make them better. At the moment, I have about 40 unfinished works. Oops. But that’s what happens when writers block occurs. I’d also have the enemy of no longer wanting to finish a story I once was so passionate about.
When I had given up on drawing I felt inadequate just by holding a pencil over a blank white paper. I didn’t know what to draw and I didn’t have any clues on where to start. It just wasn’t working for me. So I laid down the pencil and packed up my markers and colored pencils and put it all away.
When I finally got my inspirations back into my head I couldn’t stop drawing. Pictures just flowed out of the graphite that danced across the page and picture was born. I couldn’t stop because I just wanted to get all these images out of my head and onto a page to be able to share them with others to look upon them. Classic though, nothing good stays for long, because I faced the enemy of unable to draw symmetrically, which is the worst thing to not know how to do as an artist.
I had left half drawn faced and people in my sketchbooks and wouldn’t be able to draw one side the same as the other. It was like the devil himself was enjoying a nice cup of tea watching me agonize and struggle over trying to get perfection onto the page. Still, I continued to draw despite having this extreme enemy pushing and pulling at each little nerve in my OCD ridden brain reminding me that I can’t draw symmetrically.
Still, I refuse to give up these two things that I love so much, because they make me happy.
