In my last post (which was almost a month ago, but we’ll skip over that, I don’t particularly want to talk about The Event), I mentioned that I’d taken references to make a self portrait of me in Starbucks.

Well I did just that and really wanted to share it here on my blog.

There is some of The Event in this post, but just know that I was not fine, and now I’m more fine but still feeling a bit withdrawn.

I do want to talk about art and more importantly art supplies though.

Art During Times of The Event

If getting art back has taught me anything it’s that it is an extremely good tool for my emotional regulation. I suddenly understand why I did NOT cope without it. Going through things and just sitting there getting completely absorbed in making art has been helping me so much over the last month.

Until temporarily, it kind of didn’t.

After I finished the Starbucks self portrait, I suddenly got it in my head that my art wasn’t good enough and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do anything I do anymore including blogging.

It was probably connected to my general mood and what I was going through, but I also felt really lost. It was like I was having a sudden identity crisis. Maybe I stared far too hard at my jacket while drawing myself at Starbucks that it made me over analyse the person in the jacket.

For some reason, I started thinking that despite spending most of my time doing realism, I suddenly wanted to get better at illustration. The fact I’m not as good at it was apparently suddenly proof that I’m not a real artist.

I used to do illustration – that’s how I started my art journey – but I never really liked my characters. I really enjoyed colouring them in, but I thought they were a bit naff, honestly.

At first, I really didn’t understand why I was getting so upset with myself, why wasn’t I extremely happy just to have the ability to do art back?

Well, WeeGee loved my illustrations and I drew her as a character a fair few times for gifts. She asked me to make her wedding invitations. I was honoured. She loved books and penguins, so I decided to make her invitation look like a Penguin book: her and her fiance as characters on the cover, the unmistakable orange of a Penguin book and then you’d open it like a book to find the details of the wedding inside.

She really loved the idea and I excitedly started making it.
But I never got to finish it.

She passed away before I finished the invitations and, more importantly, before the wedding. I see those unfinished drawings amongst my other art every now and then, and ALL of the characters I drew carry this grief with them.

So I wanted to make new characters. I wanted to use the realism I know and love and somehow turn it into realistic illustration.

It went HORRIBLY. I was bad at it. The eyes were TERRIBLE. They looked distorted. I threw three attempts in the bin, except one which still has a REALLY dodgy eye, but I liked the rest of it.

Grief has given me this horrible awareness that time on this Earth is not guaranteed. I’ve already lived more life than WeeGee did. She died at 40, and I’m now 42. Time feels borrowed. I am fully aware that you can’t be good at something the first time you try it, but now I think about the time it takes to get better at something and whether I have that time at all.

Also, while drawing, there was this VERY HUGE awareness of how I’m SO DIFFERENT from the last time I drew. It has been about four or five years since I drew consistently. It gave me an actual identity crisis of epic proportions because I’m now doing art like the me I remember but I’m DEFINITELY NOT the me I remember.

I have travelled through a grief journey. I relapsed. I am in recovery. And now, thanks to strength training, I even look completely different.

It was jarring, and it made me cry a lot.

My son asked me why I was so upset, and I told him it was because I was SHIT at art and threw three drawings in the bin, because I could not put into words all of the above.

Well, also because I never think it’s appropriate to tell him I’m having a crisis about mortality, grief, time, and the inevitable, inescapable entropic ending of my universe.

My mood continued to be low and only improved when some of The Event resolved some two weeks later. It seems like going to my favourite art store may have made me remember the whole point of art.

My Favourite Art Store in Cardiff

The first day I woke up and The Event had receded somewhat, meaning I no longer needed to REMAIN INDOORS, I went to Cardiff with my son. I really wanted to spend some time with him before he went back to Uni, and having spent the last two weeks mostly remaining indoors except for food supplies like it was an actual lockdown I really wanted to see the world again.

For the last few years, whenever we’ve been to Cardiff, I’ve avoided my favourite art store because I wasn’t able to do art. I didn’t want to be surrounded by my old art tools when they had become symbols of something I had to give up.

This time, we went straight there from the train, and I’d forgotten how amazing art stores are. Empty sketchbooks, new pencils, new pens, new tools – just endless possibilities.

It made me remember why I loved art. It was just about making art that meant something to me, whether it was the best thing I did or not. If I thought I could make it better, I just drew it again. I drew Dr Brand from Interstellar three times, and I love the third one SO MUCH it’s actually on my living room wall. Art is also about experimenting: trying different techniques, different tools and different art supplies.

Most importantly, judging by the box of my old sketchbooks, it was about getting annoyed that Strathmore only makes Bristol Vellum Sketchbooks in a HUGE size or a TINY size, only in portrait and not square. So I’d try other sketchbooks draw one thing in them, and inevitably go crawling back to my favourite paper.

That was my art process.

Along with feeling better from spending time in Cardiff with my son, remembering all of this made me feel better about my art.

When I got home, I had the idea to draw V from Cyberpunk 2077 holding her bullet necklace and kind of merge realism and illustration together. Just to see what happened.

I didn’t like it the first time I drew it so I did it again. I actually had fun and I like the second one a lot.

I still think about the art I’m rubbish at. I still think, “Well maybe I’ll never be able to do that” and it makes me feel existential. I still carry grief with me. I’m still carrying baggage from The Event.

But, the whole point of art is to just enjoy the process. Especially if you have to remain indoors.

I’ve been drawing every day since.

About this Portrait.

If we ignore for a moment the total and utter identity mess that followed, I really loved drawing this portrait. I love drawing shiny things, clothes and hands so much. My hands were very difficult though because my super white see-through hands are apparently the same value as the shiny bits on the cup. I even made them darker than they appeared but they still feel too light.

However, it is me, so I didn’t want to stray too far from reality. The jacket I was wearing was the most fun to draw. My son actually gave it to me when him taking T meant his clothes didn’t fit his HONCH muscles anymore (he says he prefers honch to hench).

We actually went through body changes that cause clothes not to fit at the same time, him taking T, and me in recovery. We bonded a lot over how SHIT clothes sizes are. I was kind of surprised he gave the jacket to me, I thought perhaps he’d want to not see the clothes anymore. But he said it was okay and said how it fit my new recovery colour palette. I thought that was really sweet of him. It is now my FAVOURITE jacket ever, it is both my new style and I think about my son wearing it previously.

I thought about us the entire time I was drawing it. Also because Starbucks is our little home away from home and a place we usually spend time together decompressing.

I drew this in that GIANT Strathmore 12 x 9 sketchbook, I did manage to find an A4 one which is slightly smaller and I’m trying to use that currently instead. I use Caran D’Ache graphite pencils and some chunky Faber Castell pencils as they really help my wrist. And of course posca white and black paint markers which I use at the end and along with taking off the masking tape, is my favourite part.

I really like it, but I think I’ve become a bit jaded with it from the crisis that followed. Oh well, at least it finally got me to the right destination eventually.

I’m drawing everyday again. I’m trying things I’m not very good at, buying entirely too many art supplies and experimenting with them, and most importantly having fun with it and more easily remembering the whole point of art is to have fun.

Anyway, with my feeling a bit withdrawn, I think things might be a bit more random around here for a while. I’m apparently in my chaotic era, so I have absolutely no idea what I’ll post next.

But it’ll probably be Cyberpunk.

Feelings during The Event : What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here :-