What I Did When I Was Not Making Art

One day I found myself on the phone with my lovely cousin.  I was about to tell her about how since my life was so crazy with the loss of my art studio and having to move homes as well that I hadn't made any art.  I caught myself right before I said that because I knew that it wasn't true.  I may not have manifested a profound body of work, yet I had been making art.  I have a little black Moleskin that I carry with my in my purse.  When I had the spare time, drinking a ginger beer at a bar or waiting for something I would pull out my little book and do a drawing.  After I told my cousin how I was about to say a false statement, we continued on talking about how sometimes we don't give ourselves credit for what we are doing.  We often think that we are not doing something because it doesn't live up to our grand perceptions that we had created, while truthfully though, we had been working on something.  So here are some drawings that I did during a pretty busy time in my life.

I bet there are somethings that you don't give yourself credit for.  I bet if you sit down and think about it more that you will actually have some of the dreams that you've wanted, maybe not the form you wanted, but still, some of the same aspirations.

A Drawing For Today

           Sometimes in life, we pick things up and then we drop them.  Sometimes it's a bowl of cereal, a crush, a style, a diet, a job or a hobby.  For a big part of my life I drew.  I would draw for hours, forgetting about time, the world around me, my problems.  Fully pulled into whatever marks I was placing on the paper.

            I haven't finished a drawing for a while.  During my drawing drought,  I have done some scribbles, doodled while talking on the phone, started something, didn't like it, then either quickly turned the page to either stare at it and close it or make a couple marks and then move onto something else.  I couldn't find a drawing inside of me.  There was nothing to pull out. The whole process was extremely uncomfortable. 

            Several years ago, I went through a writers block.  It happened sometime after my mother passed away.  I didn't write anything for several years.  Not a page in a journal, not a postcard, not a holiday note, or a wish for a Birthday.  I finally wrote a birthday card.  The process was painful.  My handwriting was shaky and my writing seemed forced and extremely unnatural. I would even go so far as to call it painful.  1 year later,  I was filling up a notebook a month with thoughts, desires, dreams, nightmares, obsessions and memories.

            Well, on November 11, 2013,  I finished a drawing! In fact I did two, but the first one I consider more to be my warm up.  For the sake of it though, we can go ahead and say I finished two.  To my astonishment, the process wasn't painful, wasn't forced, nor was my mind  filled with thoughts of judgement.  I simply went along,  made some marks and continued till I said that it was done. I accepted it for what it was.  Not passing judgement was a relief I wasn't even mindful of at the time.

             Someone famous once said something along the lines of "If you don't know what to draw, just draw lines. If you still don't know what to draw, draw more lines" that is of course loosely quoted since I can't even remember who said it. Draw On!