My birth month, February, is National Arts Month in the Philippines. As a present for myself, I began teaching myself how to draw more seriously.
Drawings of dresses filled the pages of my extra notebooks when I was young, alongside scribblings of ramblings. I stopped the hobby-slash-habit while in college and returned only when I had the means to buy materials. I tried one type after another, not quite sticking to a single medium. And then another few years of pause.
After our daughter stopped taking art classes at a nearby mall, right before she started going to a boarding school a couple of years ago, I decided to take another stab at painting using her leftover materials (mostly acrylic). Now, later in the day when my day job’s done, I sit at my desk, turn my laptop back on and play “Scandal” (the Kerry Washington show, that is), scour Pinterest for references, and start drawing with acrylic markers or oil pastel.
I measure the time spent on a piece by how many episodes elapse. Some would be finished close to the end of one, others would take three. My progress would be faster if I watch tutorials or read books about the craft, but I find joy in figuring things out. (Read: I’m stubborn and just a little bit proud). The feeling of success after solving a problem by yourself is unmatched (even if it takes you hours to arrive at the solution instead of just minutes had you sought advice). Evidently, I take being self-taught seriously. I’ve considered taking formal classes, but I like dissecting a reference. There’s a part of my brain that lights up when I determine the right color, light values, lines, shapes, and textures for a piece. It’s a labyrinth I like getting lost in.
And what joy I find while navigating it too. There are some moments and figures and places I get the urge to commit to memory through shapes and shadows drawn on paper, whereas in the past there was a compulsion to write them down.
I’ve been learning more than just drawing too. Here are some lessons I’ve picked up while teaching myself.
Creating vs. consuming
I hate to admit it, but the best antidote to doomscrolling is, indeed, creation — or better media consumption habits, but the latter’s hard to form.
The urge to sit (or lay down) for hours and try to read through every news piece (and celebrity gossip, I’m sorry) is hard to dodge. The deluge of information that hit us as soon as we open a social media app makes the hunger to know everything insatiable. I pacify myself with the idea that information is power. I should know if the orange man in the big white house is finally six feet under. I don’t. My mind’s a dump of details about people and things that I learned against my will, just out there for the taking. I hate it.
I mean, I love the Internet. But how we’ve been using it is making us dumb. Researches from various institutions have found that doomscrolling is shrinking our brains, shortening our attention spans, and messing with our cognitive abilities. And I feel it, friend. I often tell my husband how slow my mind feels, how I’ve lost my sharpness.
So most days, I draw. It may take years before my shrunk brain matter regains its strength but I’d like to believe that this helps.
Creation as meditation
While traditional forms of meditation continue to elude me, I take drawing as reflection. When I hit the flow state, I enter a world where it’s just me and the picture I want to make. There are no worries about life and my career and the future, just how to layer and pair colors. It’s a pause. It’s a means to quiet my mind. I get to embrace a blank and be allowed to believe that I can try and explore and do more.
Artistic creative activities like drawing help regulate our emotions, a study says. And even though I still get bouts of despair here and there — I think we all do, what with the current state of the world — I’m not as angry or annoyed as when I didn’t draw.
I may never know how to quiet my mind completely by looking at a white ball of light for hours on end, but I could try to draw one and temporarily shush the demons in my head. The picture is a bonus.
It’s gonna be bad before it gets good.
Now, I’m not afraid of being a beginner. I’m always curious. Life is an endless learning journey, after all. Being great shortly after starting something is an expectation I set for myself, though. I’m a fast learner. So it irks me when I try a technique but it doesn’t work out as well as I hoped.
And I find myself kneeling at drawing’s feet most days. It is humbling to accept that you suck. I don’t consider it defeat, though. I have resigned to the fact that it’s gonna be bad before it gets good. You don’t become a master in just two months. There’s no rushing greatness. Or perhaps greatness shouldn’t even be the goal. The doing could be the destination.
I’ll be honest: When I started teaching myself to draw, I thought of monetizing the hobby. I was set on selling my pieces once I felt that they were worth something. The truth is they already are. Maybe not a thousand pesos, but concentration, clarity and a new skill are definitely great forms of return on my (time, effort, material) investment.