The Long Journey of Drawing

By: Amelia de Soto

Alright, so. (Side note: I feel like I start my articles with ‘alright, so a lot.) This article is going to be long, so read at your own risk. 

  I draw. Not a lot, but not too little where it’s like a side hobby or something. I mostly draw people in a cartooned-sense, because drawing realistically isn’t fun in my opinion. I grew up drawing as soon as my teeny fingers could move in dignified directions. Before I could even grip a pencil, I was digging in the dirt making weird little scribbles. 

  I also grew up around a lot of kids (a lot for an only child), which is when I spent most time drawing and had my own ‘little-kid’ style. I had this group of friends around me constantly who drew and were just as rambunctious as I was, so we all clung to each other. We had no need to challenge one another because we were kids, so instead, each of us had our own techniques, but we all drew together. I drew every second back then. Every. Second. If I wasn’t chasing some kids around who said they were faster than me, I was drawing. If I wasn’t wailing, I was drawing, and even then I might have been doing both. Back in the good old days, my style was comic-y. It was kind of a mixture of the Warrior Cats fandom from 2016 and dork diaries, which matched my personality. A little regurgitated, and half-baked, but cutesy.

  After I was pulled out of an on-campus school in fifth grade, I stopped drawing. I’d maybe doodle a 3-second drawing of a dude with giant eyeballs, but then not pick up the pencil for a month. I had absolutely no one around me, and my online friends had a way more constructive art style than me, so I constantly felt insecure about what I drew. 

  For a while, that feeling went on, until I made a Pinterest Art Page (kinda like a blog?) That got some attention from people on the internet that couldn’t draw, and man, my little brain received “Wow, that’s so cool” and just went spinning. After that, I basically mega-produced art again, took art requests and posted daily. I wasn’t even that good, just consistent which is what I think people enjoyed. I hit around 168k monthly viewers and stayed around there for a year until my art requests started to pile up more and more. I got stressed out and fell back down into that hole again of “am I good enough?”

I stayed like that for a while, two years at most. Then I started whirling again when I became way closer to some of the friends I literally don’t shut up about. I would draw a circle and these people would call me screaming about how cool it is, and once again my brain made the little 😀 face.

  It’s funny though because now I’m not nearly as bad at drawing and my Pinterest page is absolutely dead. That being said, I haven’t posted in a year. 

  I don’t think I ever really fell out of that, even if I go a long time without drawing. I really narrowed it down and found a style I liked, and adapted to it. Of course, I still have my ups and downs about whether something is good enough or not, but it’s not as constant.

  Taking a long time to draw, sometimes not being able to, and head walkthroughs are worth it to be able to express some of your weird-mind thoughts consistently. Sometimes describing an idea, like a triangle man with the face of an “ideal wife” Japanese doll mask, doesn’t cut it, so you gotta draw him. You can say how he sorta represents the fear of no one being real and everything is a mental delusion, but can you really describe what he looks like just with words alone? No. No, you cant.

  I really think that skills depend on environment and support system. You could be awful at something, but as soon as someone gives a genuine “THAT’S SO GOOD!! HOW DO YOU DO THAT!?” you can explode with inspiration. Being challenged is great and all, but doing the bare minimum and getting praised is even better, you know? The moral of the story is to compliment your artist friends really loudly; they’ll love it.