I used to draw all the time when I was a kid, but started doing it less and less as I got older, until it dwindled away to practically nothing in my late teens. It wasn’t that I lost interest, or got distracted with other things, though I spent a while telling myself that. The real reason is that as I outgrew my childhood innocence, my self-critical side began leaning on my artwork in an increasingly heavy fashion, until I just gave it up. I believed I’d fail every time I picked up a pencil.

Recently, I’ve been putting a lot of things in perspective, attempting to improve my life. An odd side effect of this was that the urge to draw something suddenly resurfaced, completely against my expectations. I hadn’t really thought about drawing in years, yet there it was.

I’m taking my newfound creativity as a good sign. I’m going to work on actively bludgeoning back my inner critic, who up to this point has had way too much control over my adult life. Sure, my drawings aren’t perfect, but they’re good enough, and the more I do them, the more I’ll improve. For once, the positivity I feel while creating outweighs the feelings of self-judgement I’ve gotten used to imposing on myself.

Also, things I’d forgotten:

–How good it feels when you get that one line inexplicably perfect, and how frustrated you get when you can’t achieve the same effect in mirror image on the other side of the body.
–How you’ll work for 20 minutes on one itsy bitsy detail, and even when you’re done, you’re certain it doesn’t look quite right. But then you finally zoom out and look at the whole piece, and it looks fine.
–Reality is unrealistic. You’ll find this one is especially true when using a photograph as a guide.
–Faces and hands are the most expressive part of the human body, which means that the attitude of the picture depends on them, yet they are also the parts of the human body that are the most frustratingly difficult to draw.
–In contrast, breasts are one of the easiest things on the human body to draw. Perhaps that’s the secret reason everybody likes them so much. Or not.

I also learned that drawing is still totally worth it. Anybody who wants to get back into something they gave up out of fear (which, if we’re honest with ourselves, is the reason we give up most things) should check out Cordelia’s blog. That chick is doing what we should all be doing.

So I’m adding drawings to my site. May the powers that be have mercy on me.