When I was a kid, I used to be
obsessed with drawing-- sometimes accurately, sometimes grotesquely out of
proportion--Sonic the Hedgehog. I first started taking old video game magazines
and tracing the speedy porcupine from various ads, usually cheekily wagging his
finger, eyebrow cocked and looking up to no good. Then, I would go to the
mirror and attempt to mimic his cartoonish eye; later in life, my friends would
note my expressive eyebrows, calling me “an eyebrow actor”, something I never
sure was a compliment or a derision – perhaps I was incapable of emoting
outside of the thick, arched buttresses of my brows.
As fast as Sonic ran, I ferociously
traced artwork from whatever subscriptions I had at my house and bringing them
into 2nd grade show-and-tell. Hellacious moonscapes, flaming skulls,
the intricate robotic anatomy of the Terminator—all were shown in prideful
displays of what I thought to be an unstoppable personal talent, burgeoning and
worthy of the highest accolades.
“But it’s all done on tracing
paper!” said one of my friends. His name was Tom and he drew prodigiously well
and was already becoming known as the class smarty-pants. I looked over his
artwork, ‘Where’s Waldo’-esque scenes filled with fantastical creatures and
complex geometry. I couldn’t help but feel a nagging sensation that he was more
talented than I. Also, he seemed to ace every quiz and excel in just about
every other subject except for social competence. He was pasty, not athletically
inclined, but we both took advanced math classes together and I was in awe of
the genius I began to see within him.
That day, I resolved to draw more
like him, yet had no idea where to start. His ideas seemed to flow out of some sort
of Manna pool that I had yet to tap within myself as I spent hours hammering my
head with a pencil seeking that magical orifice. No matter how much I studied
his increasingly fantastical drawings, I failed to make the neural connections
in my own creative cortex come even close to what he was creating. At this
point, I had graduated from tracing paper to plain white, but I was still most
talented at copying others work, albeit by a more impressive freehand method.
In 3rd grade I won an
art contest for drawing my shoe. The drawing went on to be displayed at a pop-up
art gallery in one of the district schools. I went over with my parents to look
at the shoe, saw it, then, when the event was over, we took it down and went
home. I remember it hanging over my toilet for a few years. This was, probably,
my highest artistic achievement. From that point on, for whatever reason,
possibly the lack of funding for the arts or just plain oversight, I all but
discontinued my passion for drawing. There was probably a 4-year gap in between
then and when I began picking up music that I did anything remotely artistic,
filling most of my spare time with the trends of the day—Magic Cards, Pogs,
Soccer and chasing girls around the playground.
Much later in life, I bought
several sketchpads and markers with paintbrush tips and began drawing again,
slowly, but surely. My first few sketches were embarrassing, sloppy and devoid
of much complexity, but the further one got in the pages, the better my
technique became. I lost most of them in a place trip across the country but
luckily there are some existing pictures to prove that I did something with
that expensive marker set.
I wonder sometimes why I stop
attempting to make art: is there already enough in the world? Am I just lazy?
Do I get depressed when the art starts turning sour and feel like that there
really is nothing special inside of me? Of course, from time to time these
thoughts nip at my tail. But the spirit of creating and creation is so
important to me, so essential to my existence, that the thought of only being
able to consume and never release that energy makes me feel excessively
bloated, needing some sort of relief from that creative pressure valve.
Just as I developed apathy for
laying a colored pen or pencil on the page, I find it more and more difficult
to fill in empty pages with words. An almost Herculean effort is required to
arouse in me the ability to write several pages of cogent thought, as the
constant distractions and demands of modern day life buzz into my subconscious
thoughts. I’ve succumbed to the addictiveness of composing pithy tweets and
Facebook updates and no longer feel the desire to compose free-flowing prose,
as it seems less and less likely people will take the time required to read
something complex or lengthy. I feel like an ancient man with no beard or a
rich man with no one left to tell his tale to.
The real key to creation lies in
the same drive to excel in other areas that seem to have nebulous tangible
results in the real world. For example: pull-ups. Over the past two months,
I’ve acquired a pull-up bar and gone from being able to do several to doing
sixteen in a row. If you were to ask me last year if I thought I could do
twenty pull-ups, the notion would have seemed absurd; now it appears right
within my literal reach and grasp. To apply the same determination to my
writing, my search for fulfillment, monetarily and of other natures, and I will
need to do this and soon be on my way to success. But what can be my artistic
pull-up bar?
Setting goals is fantastic. My goal
at the moment, or more precisely, several paragraphs ago, was to set a finish
line at two pages, and it appears I am getting closer and closer as I empty the
contents of my brain upon the page. How easy it is when you let the truth guide
your word! Also, keeping in mind that ‘Creation is Key’ helps: editing can
always happen later. If you have not created anything, despite how trite or
banal or just plain abhorrent the content is, you will have nothing to edit in
the end. And that means you are still keeping inside of you all that you have
consumed, which, my friends, is A LOT. Even your dreams are content creators of
data that you consume, and you don’t have a lot of control over what goes on in
those, do you?
As a child, I had no goals with
art. This seems like an absurd statement, but it is true: as children, we don’t
think in terms of having concrete artistic workmanship; it either comes out of
us naturally or inspired by a mentor or competition. We must think as children
and work as adults to realize our artistic aspirations and reach our peaks as
human beings.
