So, as I spontaneously uploaded an image to DeviantART, I realized something about myself. When I started drawing, way back like nine or ten years ago, it was really for myself. I wanted to manifest these characters that I invented in a tangible way — seal them away from the erosion of time through strokes and colors on paper. It was totally for myself. As I aged and my drawing got attention here and there, I could say that less honestly.
When I turned into an overachiever in school and started aiming to please with well-written papers and good test scores, it got harder for me to do other things without some sort of performance orientation. You know – I’m doing this so that I do it well.
When I became an art student…well.
I lost sight of drawing as being something I did for myself. Yeah, classes ended and I’d doodle on my own. But it probably felt purposeless after having gotten graded on artwork before. I kept up my manga a tiny bit at college last year. But it was like running in circles. I’d always end up feeling dissatisfied.
I must admit that I can’t really draw — like, yeah, doodle a character’s outfit or make a funny exchange in writing or a stupid encounter I have with my cat and turn it into a comic strip — but I can’t really draw without doing it with the intention of pleasing an audience.
I know that mentality is not where progress comes from.
But then in comes my writing, really since I began RE as a novel, and I was able to win back the mentality that I had lost in drawing. RE was turned from a comic into a novel because of my passion for the story — plain and simple. FF was turned into a novel because it was a whimsical, light tale that I wanted to tell myself while I was drowning in stress and the terrifying prospect of adulthood before going off for my first year of college. Catcher came from a dream of one of my own all-time favorite characters and the intrigue over writing out a mythological creature I hadn’t dealt with. Sun-Walking came from indignation over things I learned on patriarchy and women’s rights. Wind-Running came from my inability to get said indignation entirely out of my system, and it was also my means for trying to temper my bitterness towards communities I’ve left by sending Lucienne through that journey.
My motives for my writing are what used to motivate me to draw. Drawing is beginning to slip away from being important to me. Writing that out and owning to that makes me sad. It makes me want to revive my efforts and push myself somewhere new, but………eh. Where I used to gain pleasure in my own art to the extent where I’d love it on my walls, I recently went through and stripped down all but, hmm…two substantial pieces of my own from my walls. So what would my art be for? Aah.
Going into my third year of college (canNOT believe that), I recognize my priorities are shifting much more towards making a career for myself. So many prospects that have absolutely nothing to do to art are much more tantalizing to me at the moment than trying to sell my damn pictures.
I really meant for this to be one quaint little line of writing, but my thoughts ran away. Back to Wind-Running.
By the way — to prove that’s where my energies are…between it and its predecessor, Sun-Walking, I’ve written over 100,000 words. AND THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL.
