53. overcoming guilt and shame. did you at least have fun while drawing that?
quite a rambly entry. sorry...
not-so-short backstory
seriously, if you want to skip the sob story: go ahead. this is a little embarrassing for me to get out there too... warnings for childhood trauma stuff.
i've been drawing for as long as i can remember.
i did it, because it was fun. i did it, because i liked something so much that i wanted to see if i can immortalize it in paper. also my dad liked drawing too. most of my drawings were of pikachu from pokemon, a character that is still fond of me to this day. and since i was mostly alone as a kid, i also drew the only company i had: lots of stuffed animals and plushies!! and i'd draw fairies, then i'd make wishes to my paper fairies after. i'd draw myself with pikachu, my only best friend at the time. and then i'd draw characters, which then my brain would make up things that they're saying. i had no clue that comics existed, so i didn't bother making speech bubbles or writing words. i was having conversations with my drawings in my head.
drawing helped a lot in my childhood loneliness.
but it's a little unfortunate that the household i grew up in fell into stereotypical southeast asian family tropes. where i wanted to draw and have fun, there was much emphasis on academics. studying. doing things EXACTLY by the book and you need to have everything done right on your first try, 100% success with no room for failure, you need to practice strictly and study or you WILL fail and it will all be a waste. you have to be good. you have to be great. fun and not-so-fun started to bleed into each other. in stress and boredom and sleepiness, i remember i used to draw huuuuuge pencil spirals on my text books. completely ignoring that i was going over the text and making a mess on the page, even if i were doing it in pencil. in my head, i was having internal dialogues with the spiral and giggling to myself. like the weird friendless kid i was. my mom would find these textbooks and get mad at me, saying that she paid good money to have me study and not doodle and "trash" my textbook. i was still getting good grades anyway, so i didn't know what the problem was.
the older i got (but still young - around elementary age), the more people saw what i was doodling. i didn't like that. drawing was an extremely intimate activity for when i was all alone. or maybe i didn't mind to be looked at at first, but i was making FUN drawings. that doesn't mean they were necessarily GOOD. so i have people who are genuinely interested and people who are... less kind about it. the latter was louder about it too. unsurprising that i was called a "weirdo" a lot (i remember being called that for drawing some character in a winky expression). sometimes, my older brother would go "your drawings are weird, why not make anime instead?" suddenly, drawing was starting to make me a little nervous. but i still did it.
2010 saw the release of my little pony. and while our country didn't air the show, i was (UNFORTUNATELY) a very online and (UNFORTUNATELY) lonely kid who liked being on the internet. so cute, colorful, magical thing was another magnet for me!! wow!! and i saw lots of "bronies" aka older dudes liking the show as much as i did.1 so i reasonably thought "if boys can enjoy this, i can show this to my older brother!!"
that. ended pretty badly!! he was laughing at my face not even seconds into the intro and left without giving it a chance. it was then that my underdeveloped brain, while not having the words to properly explain it until now, learned that my interests are shameful and embarrassing.
that, coupled with the comments i'd get for my drawings and how i grew up being discouraged from anything that isn't automatically perfect, made me more withdrawn to show anyone anything about what i like. about what was fun for me, and not necessarily practical or academic. i made sure to only draw alone - and while it was still fun, part of me was a little scared that they looked bad even when i was the sole audience of it. i had a little folder with all my drawings stashed inside, where i'll hide so that only i can see. but i was still drawing like i was expecting that privacy to be broken one day. keeping secrets was bad in the household. i drew a lot of ponies and ocs with animal features. mostly ponies!! i made my own oc in those deviantart pony maker games!! but since i thought ponies were stupid, i lived in fear of being discovered.
my mom found my drawing folder in my hands and asked to see it. i was scared, so i said no. she tried to pry it from my small, probably 10 year old hands. in her anger, she ended up punching me in the nose and i got a pretty nasty nosebleed from it. she never got the folder, and i hid in one of the spare rooms and tried to draw from comfort all while bleeding and crying. but i hated everything that went in the paper. it just made me sad and angry, and i remember crumpling and throwing lots of my papers away.
drawing wasn't fun for me anymore.2
pressure
reasonably, i quit art for lots of years after not finding joy in it anymore. when i came back, my brain involuntarily adopted this mindset: when everyone is watching, everything must turn out good.
i don't even remember having a reason to come back. i'm gonna make a guess though that i saw something cute and decided to myself "i WANT to draw like this person." it felt like i wanted to mimic a conventionally nice art style, instead of having things that i WANT to draw. now that i think about it, drawing the things i like felt secondary to having a good art style.
"NO!! I CAN'T DRAW (insert thing i like) YET, BECAUSE I'M NOT GOOD AT DRAWING YET!!"
it's for that reason, i clung onto references. even to this day, i can't draw anything without at least ONE reference that looks good. everything i did was referenced in one form or another, and some are referenced in ways i'm ashamed about, because if i didn't use a reference there was no way i could ever draw something THAT decent. while references in art aren't inherently bad3, i found that not having them meant a FULL STOP to any drawing ability i had. all i'd get was a blank page and frustrated scribbles.
learning how to draw from square one: attempt one
so at the start of last year i thought the best course of action was to start all over again. however, that STILL didnt mean i was drawing for fun. i did believe i was in the right direction though, learning my fundamentals from step one. i didn't have a set "curriculum", but i grinded through everything i can. winged everything. i was so determined, that i decided to QUIT ALL DRAWING UNTIL I HAVE NAILED EVERY SINGLE FUNDAMENTAL DOWN.
"NO!! I CAN'T DRAW (insert thing i like) YET, BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DRAW (in general) YET!!"
i made it until shapes4, gesture drawing, literally 1% of anatomy (centered around the face and the head)... until i completely gave up and fell back into the trap of drawing under immense pressure and dependency on references.
it was references or die. and for a good chunk, my art just. stayed dead.
learning how to draw from square one: attempt two
here's where we are today, a year later.
just a few days ago, i decided to pick up art again by the fundamentals. this time, i tried to have a more structured approach: learn fundamentals starting from shape and form, instead move onto figures first before anatomy. this was because i came to the conclusion that i was absolutely nothing without my references, and for once i truly wanted to change that and start drawing from my own thoughts and ideas.
my drive wasn't fully there, but in scrambling around for resources for the very fundamentals, i saw a course that offered exactly that: a starting point. not only that, it also presented an approach to art that opened my eye to the fact that i've lost the ability to just... draw for the sake of it.
drawabox, the 50% rule, and practice of drawing for fun (without guilt or shame)
without going too much into it, drawabox is a free art course highlighting spatial reasoning fundamentals. basically how 3d translates to 2d. which is a good enough starting point for me. besides that, there is a section in the introductory lesson 0 that laid out some rules for some course: one of which was the 50% rule.
"At most, half of your time spent drawing can be used for studying. At least half of your time drawing must be spent on doing it for its own sake. Play. Exploration."
... the emphasis here isn't about having fun, actually. at least according to the course itself. it was more on drawing the things you want despite your skill level, and then allowing yourself to come into terms with that "failure". it's about letting go of worries and perfectionism when it's finally your time to draw, so that when you do equip yourselves with the fundamentals, you don't stress yourself out on whatever's next in your own art journey.
in this rule, he stresses NOT TO USE REFERENCES (at least if you're like me who clings desperately to them). just draw. it doesn't matter if you're ready, or that what YOU want to draw will turn out bad.
just draw and allow yourself to make those mistakes.
i know the whole point of it wasn't for fun, but it felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders when i realized... i could just draw!
"[The point of the 50% rule is to] develop your capacity to enjoy things that don't result in something that looks nice."
the process always SUCKED for me, and i wanted my art to look good as soon as possible. art wasn't fun for me before, BECAUSE i kept stressing on making things look good to the point of desperation. when in fact, it never really was about them—i started art as an outlet to bring me joy in an otherwise pretty lonely life. i still draw nowadays on occasion to make art for my wonderful partner, and they're actually the ones who inspire me to draw better. i'll give them a pass since they are an important extension of me who i hold very, very dear (when i make art for them, i feel way prouder and happier than when i try to draw anything or for anyone else)... but otherwise, my art should be for me alone.
when i was younger, all my art had was guilt and shame. in fact, those two things feel like they've rooted themselves deep within me. no one is going to hurt me just because i tried and it didn't turn out as well as they would like. at least not this time... this should be obvious, but i don't know. i think i just needed to hear that mistakes are okay. and, because i'm putting in the effort to study as well, that all my effort and playing around will amount to something good in the long run.
the guilt and shame of existing... a completely different thing, but also kind of intertwined with how i see art. the guilt of not being good enough and the shame of drawing things that interest me as opposed to other people. letting go of those feelings is a long journey, but allowing myself to enjoy art without anyone's permission feels like the step in the right direction.
i don't know if my ramblings make sense. i think they tend to go all over the place and lose direction... so sorry!! but i'm hoping that someone out there could benefit in hearing this:
you are allowed to do the things that make you happy.
... even if it's to myself, i think it's worth getting off my chest. so i dunno!! make art!! i'll continue to make art!! and study!! but also draw silly things and allow it to look bad!! after all, every piece can just be a draft... i can go back to it when i'm "ready" or have "a better art style", but it's just as important to make that first step even if it looks a little wonky.
links of interest:
🍀 email me? angelais@protonmail.com
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poor me. too young to realize that a good 90% of them were NOT normal about it.↩
an important disclaimer to make: i don't hate my mom. i really love her and she does a lot. i just wish she raised me different, maybe? she hasn't directly apologized for this, but she once told me how much she regrets hitting me as a kid. please be kind about this. please be kind.↩
references are, in fact, a form of learning in itself. i wouldn't know HOW to draw if i didn't reference pikachu on the tv as a kid over and over again. all good artists know how, how often, and when to use their references: which was exactly my problem.↩
boxes... so... many... boxes... actually, it was ALL boxes. but they're very fundamental stuff. this youtube video by pikat is one of my favorites when it comes to explaining WHY they're so useful, and they're a really inspiring artist in general.↩