How I started drawing (again)

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” - C.S. Lewis

For me it was soon after I turned 26.

But let me start from the beginning...

As a little girl I remember I loved to draw. What little kid doesn't? I remember whenever I would visit my mom at work she'd hand me an outdated document and say I could draw on the back of it. That's all I needed to be entertained.

When it came time for me to go to school, for convenience my mom picked the one that was closest to home. It happened to be an Arts school. And I was enrolled in the Drawing class. It was pretty much like any other class, just that we had a couple more hours to paint or make little clay sculptures.

After 4 years my mom told me I had to move to another school to learn something more serious because what the heck am I gonna do with arts? Am I gonna be an aaaaartist? In a country with a problematic economy where it was hard enough to get a job anyhow, my mom had the best intentions at heart. And to be honest there wasn't any Rembrandt potential detectable in me. I wasn't bad at drawing, but I wasn't particularly good either. I was just ok.

So I understood that drawing is something I'm not that good at anyway and also something for kids that I need to outgrow. And so I did. I went on to learn math and physics, then foreign languages, then sociology. I worked all sort of jobs that I guess I just happened to end up with because a girl's gotta eat. And the idea of picking up a pencil again hadn't crossed my mind at all.

So I was 26 and the last time I drew something was in the 4th grade.

I was going about my day pretending to be a functional adult, sharing cute and funny comics off of 9gag with my boyfriend and trying not to kill our plants. And after one too many of these shares I thought to myself I could draw that. Because they were really cute, but there wasn't a crazy level of skill involved so it seemed doable. At the time I was already realizing that there were lost of things I wasn't doing because I didn't feel like I was any good. But being bad at something for a long enough time is how you get good at it, isn't it? So when I discovered Bibicantdraw who was just wrapping up 1 year of drawing every day and being able to see her incredible progress, I took it as a sign and went for it.

My boyfriend already had some art supplies around the house leftover from his more artistic days so I was all set. I started drawing, learning, growing, making mistakes, growing even more and enjoying the process more and more every day. I started with little doodle-notes left around the house for my boyfriend to find, these then turned into silly clumsy comics about ordinary things that I thought were funny or sweet, then into a book to welcome my nephew to the world and then .. and then.. and then I got here where you're reading this blog on my portfolio website.

Once I stopped trying to fit into norms that didn't fit me and I just let myself do things poorly before doing them well, it all went pretty smoothly. And now I'm doing the most that I can to make my inner child happy and make up for the time that I wasted not letting myself enjoy wonderful childish things.

And now I can enjoy reading fairy tales again.