I can make art again.

That sentence feels almost absurdly simple, but for several years – and despite MANY attempts – I genuinely believed this part of my life was over.

Recovery and strength training haven’t merely made me far more hench than I’ve ever been in my life – they’ve given me back the ability to draw, shop for food and exist in my body with far less injuries.

To explain what that means to me, I have to explain what happened in 2022.

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2022 The End of an Era

In 2022, I gave up art – not because I was bored or had run out of ideas, but because drawing caused me too much pain.

I have hypermobility and a rib deformity, and I’ve experienced rib pain since primary school. But by my mid-thirties, as I entered perimenopause, it became disabling. Drawing could trigger intercostal muscle strains that lasted for months. The pain wrapped around my rib cage from my back into my chest. It affected my ability to clean my flat, shop for food, and turn an Asda trolley around a corner without searing pain.

Eventually, I wrongly accepted that this was simply ageing. I stopped drawing so I would no longer make the pain worse.

Losing art caused me enormous grief. I learnt art in 2012 while in my first recovery and it had become the only coping mechanism I’d ever found that worked as powerfully as my eating disorder. Art helped keep me in recovery because it gave me something to recover for. When I lost it – while also grieving the death of my best friend – I lost part of what had made recovery feel worthwhile.

I spent the next few years trying to find a replacement coping mechanism but nothing worked the same. However, I did learn an ABSURD amount of craft skills. My flat is COVERED in macrame.

I felt hopeless, and that there was nothing I could do about it. I even considered selling my art tools, as we’re told to accept losing mobility as part of ageing. But I was only in my mid thirties and am now 42, it didn’t make any sense.

I had been taught an understanding of recovery that left me feeling completely hopeless, with nowhere to go.

I had come to understand deliberately eating high-protein and strength training were associated with diet culture and definitely NOT recovery. I believed that I was supposed to eat intuitively and trust that my body would take care of the rest. I listened, I did everything I was told, I maintained my set weight intuitively for over a decade, so how was I deteriorating and losing more and more function?

My hypermobility, rib deformity and perimenopause were all part of the picture. But I do know that waiting for my body to become stronger – without giving it either the very necessary protein building blocks or the physical stimulus to build strength – did not work. Obviously, because that’s what biology says will happen, but I was so wrapped up in that side of the internet from my last recovery that I needed to be told this.

When I entered eating disorder recovery again in April last year, I refused to define recovery as merely returning to my previous recovered body. That “recovered” body had become increasingly unliveable. The thought of going back to it, made me not want to recover at all.

I couldn’t live like that anymore. After attempting drawing again that same month and it hurting a lot, I desperately wanted to try to do everything in hope that I would be able to make art again.

This time, I needed recovery to include life – not just surviving the chronic pain caused by drawing a piece of art or going to the supermarket.

I ate deliberately. I took supplements. I ate more protein. I strength trained progressively – not to punish my body or make it smaller (parts of me are larger than they’ve EVER been) or avoid fat gain (you gain both fat and muscle at the same time. You cannot gain muscle without gaining fat while purposely gaining weight) but to help it become stronger and live less painfully. Rest remained part of training, but it was no longer being confused with permanent inactivity.

I had to eat to support the things I wanted my body to hopefully be able to do.
I had to train to rebuild the capacity I’d lost.

Now, a year of recovery and strength training later, all that work has started to pay off in the way I’d hoped most desperately for:

I can make art again.

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One Problem: I’m a Bit Shit Now

Two weeks ago, YouTube recommended some art videos to me. Watching them made me realise just how much I missed making art. For days afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about it – or about all the pieces I’ve wanted to create since giving it up in 2022.

Two of them are Cyberpunk 2077-related. I express my love of everything through art, and gaming has always given me an enormous drive to create. I’ve drawn all the Mass Effect characters, but the only Cyberpunk 2077 piece I’ve made is V wearing Johnny’s jacket. It was one of my last drawings.

I began wondering whether I had finally built enough muscle, strength and stability to try again.

After all, I can now do so many other things I had lost the ability to do before I relapsed. I can stand up from the floor without using my hands. I can remain standing while putting on my trousers, socks and shoes. I can lift my rubbish into the giant Biffa bin. I can push a trolley containing a week’s worth of food.

I even managed to destroy a sofa.

So, I bought a new sketchbook and dug all my supplies out of the storage bin beneath my bed. I started drawing the day my sketchbook arrived. I didn’t know what to draw, so I looked at my hand holding the iron tablets that happened to be on the table and decided to draw that.

I knew there would be a relearning curve. It was why I hadn’t attempted any of the pieces I truly wanted to make when I tried drawing again last year.

IT WENT BAD.

I had forgotten how to draw. I layered the graphite incorrectly and created a great muddy mess. In retrospect, celebrating my return to art by drawing hands may have been a terrible decision. I could have chosen literally anything easier than hands, but no.

In my defence, although I’d bought the same kind of sketchbook I used years ago, its paper was different. The tooth was uneven and I HATED IT. It gave everything a pixelated, muddy appearance.

Most importantly, though: aside from my muscles moaning about their unexpected new assignment, my ribs didn’t hurt.

My forearm, bicep, tricep and lat were burning as though I’d done a workout, but it felt like ordinary muscular fatigue – not the pain that used to wrap around my rib cage and remain for months. I went to bed. When I got up the next morning, I was mostly fine.

It felt MIRACULOUS.

My muscles were a little shaky, as if to say WHAT JUST HAPPENED, so I gave them a rest day and prepared for my next drawing.

I decided to draw another Starbucks cup. I’m far more confident drawing shiny things, so I searched my photos and found a few decent references.

Two days later, I opened the sketchbook containing my favourite paper – the one I already had here but been afraid to ruin now that I was a noob again – and began a larger, more time-consuming drawing.

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The Starbucks Cup

When it comes to drawing, I’m rather like Tamatoa from Moana. If it is SHINY I will want to draw it. I will also want to buy SHINY things whenever I see them in shops, purely so that I can draw them too.

I have used Pinterest and royalty free references for my drawings in the past, but I much prefer using my own references. This means gathering shiny things to draw has become an entirely separate hobby.

I love realism because my rubbish vision that can’t be corrected with glasses means that I can’t see well in 3D. When I draw, I exaggerate the bright whites and deepen the blacks. The finished drawing then looks more real and 3D to me than the original reference.

It’s almost as if I can recall the memory surrounding the reference better now that I can see a real 3D image. Photographs look flat, cloudy and washed out through my eyes. I have A LOT of fun correcting the references and purposely making them more 3D.

The Starbucks cup contains everything I love about drawing. It’s SHINY. I have been missing Starbucks. The reference means a lot to me because it came from time spent with my son, and I actually drank the thing I was drawing. It wasn’t say, some strawberry from Pinterest that 500 people had already drawn.

This drawing was much harder physically for it being larger. It also turns out I desperately need more black coloured pencils, I was using tiny stubs, and a LOT of the drawing was black.

My entire right arm was HUGE after colouring the background. I looked like someone’s before and after gym progress photo: half of me flat, the other half pumped like Popeye the Sailor Man.

Mostly, I remembered how much fun drawing is. How calming it is. How much it helps my anxiety, how much more connected I feel to my identity when I’m creating something.

I felt renewed and invigorated. It almost felt like coming home to a place I loved so dearly. I had longed for it so much, and I was finally back – this time without an injury.

I did experience rib pain while making this one. I did overdo it though with the tiny stub pencils, and also because I just got carried away with doing art again. But it was the regular soreness that I’ve had since primary school rather than another intercostal injury. I think I’ll always have some level of chronic pain with my ribs as I also struggle with flares of slipping rib syndrome.

Strength training isn’t going to fix my rib deformity or hypermobility. But this time, my body tolerated the work without becoming injured. The soreness went away after a few rest days, plenty of food and an entirely unreasonable number of Barebells protein bars.

I might start training my chest and arms for endurance while keeping the strength I have and see if that improves my tolerance even further. This was the whole point of strength training to begin with. The image is incredibly funny though:
“What are you training for?”
“Drawing Cyberpunk 2077 fan art”.

I have been really emotional since I finished it. It has given me hope. It has given me another reason to keep eating and well, to keep training too.

In my opinion, the drawing is still not up to the standard I remember reaching before., But I’m sure I’ll get back there, or perhaps move in a completely different direction.

Although I HATED the first drawing, I kind of enjoy merging illustration with the badly drawn realistic hands. I got a bit nervous about ruining the Starbucks cup so I just ended up adding some stars. But that’s part of returning to art too: my realism tends to go a bit wrong if I’m not confident about the strokes I am making.

I DESPERATELY hope I can draw those Cyberpunk 2077 drawings I’ve been dreaming about since 2022, although the pressure of them feels intense.

I might just have a go of it because I always forget you are allowed to draw the same thing again later. I drew Dr Brand from Insterstellar three times. I LOVED the third time and have it up on my wall.

I just prefer to practice by making actual art.

Drills are MIND-NUMBING to me. NO THANKS.

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The Recovery Road That Led Me Here.

The drawing I attempted in April last year, that ended up causing me a lot of pain, was one of the reasons I decided to include strength training in my recovery. It took a whole year for that decision to pay off in this particular way. During that year, so many other things improved too.

It’s still hard. Unfortunately, I still have mental illnesses and physical conditions. Right now, for example, I’m dealing with a gnarly cluster headache episode.

I would love to say that recovery and strength training cured me and I can now live a normal life. They didn’t, and I can’t. I have only trained entirely at home as I often struggle to leave my house and I’ve only done the minimum effective dose of strength training this entire time. Twice a week, sometimes less.

But, despite not being cured of all that ails me, everything I’ve done has given me back the coping mechanism that has always worked best for me.

I can make art again.

Here’s hoping it continues and I get less shit at it.

What recovering this way has felt like the entire time because my Instagram feed is full of people making recovery a moral issue :-