There’s emotions and thoughts that are sometimes too painful to talk about. Sometimes it feels like no one would even understand me if I tried. The lines between being coherent and accurate seem to get more and more blurred, the older I get. When I can’t write out the words or when I can’t speak them, that’s when I draw them. Playing Pictionary with myself till I can figure out how I feel, and where to go from there.
Ever since I was a kid, I’d always loved drawing. The constant feeling of not being in control of my everyday life can lead me to absolute mania, so it’s nice to be in control of the characters and colors running across a 4 by 6-inch blank, white page.
Being a creative has always helped me express myself, but now more than ever. College can feel like an endless march towards nothingness. Trying to figure out when the switch from hating school when it was free to now giving up $48,000 a year school became okay baffles me all the time. I’m so content that I’ve developed this skill to help cope.
To try and distract myself from these insidious thoughts, I take to drawing the outlines of a women, and filling her out to be a partial image of me, mixed with improvements I need to make in my life. Other times it’s just raw emotion. Though at the end of 45 minutes of drawing, I always feel the weight lifted off my shoulders.
I tend to always draw my women with tattoos, because I believe that art is beautiful. The art we choose to put on ourselves becomes a bonus to the art that I draw. I tend to really admire the commitment that my peers have in inking themselves, as well. Expressing yourself through art is the easy part, but trying to explain it to another set of eyes is a difficult task. I see art through eyes that have no expectations. I don’t look at it as I would the world in front of me, but I let it make me feel, and I let it make me process, allowing the lines to blur all over again.