(new post) is drawing fun?
(view on the blog: https://cerberus.bearblog.dev/is-drawing-fun/)
i've seen many people talk about only drawing for fun, in past years. lots of discussion about moving away from paying attention to number, especially as the economic situation in many parts of the world has worsened and pressure mounds to make it go up. people are desperate for a reprieve from early-morning-grindset capitalism, and in this case, artists are tired of just being people-pleasers. i'm not criticizing this whatsoever - i think any ethos that prizes your own creativity over the demands of the market can only be a good thing. but am i the only one for who it kindof just doesn't work? everytime i see some kind of reassurance or platitude that it's okay to draw for fun, it bounces off of me a little.
i think i just struggle to understand what "drawing for fun" means.
i feel silly admitting that. it sounds like such an easy and obvious concept. i think i get satisfaction from creating a drawing; it's not that it's something i do completely begrudgingly. it's just not and never has been a "fun" activity for me. drawing is automatic and second-nature, but not like breathing and eating. it's more like walking: a technique i learned as a consequence of being alive - not necessarily because i wanted to.
why i learned to draw, i don't know. i remember so well the feeling of confusion whenever i'd be asked why i liked it. no matter how old i got i'd always think, "am i supposed to like drawing?". in fact, up to a certain age i usually felt a little indignant when asked. this thing that identified me so strongly to other people, that i spent thousands of hours on developing and refining and which felt like my best shot at interacting authentically with the world, was something that actually brought to light a lot of pain and frustration in myself. i didn't actually know how i felt about the act of drawing. i usually felt poorly about myself while doing it. i don't even know if i can say that it was something i wanted to get better at, but i felt like i had to, apropos of literally nothing. inexplicably, from a young age, getting better and learning how to replicate the art i admired felt existentially important. it felt like if i didn't, i wouldn't be myself.
okay, maybe not literally nothing - i was a chronically bullied, left-out autistic kid. maybe i felt like i needed validation the only way i knew how to get it: by drawing a pokemon good enough that kids would go "whoa, it's pikachu!" and that adults would mistake it for a cat rather than a rabbit. in a world devoid of affirmation, of course i would doggedly chase any bone thrown to me. but it really did feel inexplicable; it felt so life-or-death, to be a skilled artist and to be known for being a skilled artist. on the other hand, the apple never falls far from the tree. or people never fall from coconut trees, or whatever. (realizing now that people love to use fruit and trees to talk about historical context.)
there's such a friction to drawing, for me. a push-and-pull, a gazing into a funhouse mirror. i have an image in my head that needs to get out, but all i can do is struggle against my procreate canvas. i put that line down, i sketched that eye, i used that colour. everything here is a decision i made. was it the right one? all of my ideas and aspirations are all unavoidably filtered through my personal semiotics, my preferred techniques, and my hand-eye coordination skills. when i stare at my drawings, i am staring at myself. and i had a long stint of eisoptrophobia1 as a teenager.
it's funny, in retrospect, that so much emotion went into my process of drawing, but not so much the content. i mostly just drew various Intellectual Properties – pokemon, zelda, warrior cats, persona. when i was old enough to know there was more to the internet than neopets, runescape and youtube, i didn't really make original characters or "vent art" like i saw other kids doing. i felt bad about that, too. i wanted to have original ideas. hell, i didn't even really make majority-original concepts like i do now until 2020 or so. but it still felt vital to my existence that i be good at drawing what wasn't intellectually mine, at taking it apart and putting it back together and at least throwing my own spice on it, if nothing else.
am i supposed to like drawing? my first major dive into bringing my own brainchild to life was my webcomic, catlamp. it took 8 years to actually know what to do with it; i held onto the premise for that long because i thought it sounded compelling, but had no real substance to put to it. it only became an original concept in the first place because my best friend encouraged me away from its Pokemon Mystery Dungeon origins. she believed in my ability to come up with something cool on my own merits, and inspired me to do it. due to intergenerational and childhood trauma, i was (and would continue to be) developing many mental health symptoms, which couldn't have been all bad because the most severe of them would eventually give me the inspiration for catlamp's actual plot and presentation.
what made me start drawing (mental illness from lack of validation) made me hate drawing (mental illness from lack of validation) made me keep drawing (mental illness from lack of validation).
am i supposed to like drawing?
dyslexia is not language-agnostic. there's some evidence that dyslexic students in italy (where the scholastic language has a more phonetic orthography) struggle less academically than those in some other countries, for example.2 as a teen, i had a long falling-out with reading and writing after my schizophrenia onset. i became resentful of trying to make sense in a world where what i said was liable to be turned against me. i stopped recognizing words on pages as easily, and struggled to keep my thoughts together. my teachers started commenting that the conceptual flow of my essays felt disjointed, almost like nonsequitirs, and i baffled my family quite a few times when trying to explain or respond to something, stuttering out words and stitching broken phrases together. english became something i tripped over, begrudgingly, as if unlearning what once felt automatic to me. i listened to myself talk and heard funhouse mirrors of my own thoughts. it was no longer my best shot at communicating authentically with the world.
in my early 20s, i joined a language learning circle for my heritage language, sm'algya̱x. sm'algya̱x has many more sounds than english, at least several of which are leagues apart from the sounds your mouth is used to making when you grow up speaking only english. i stuttered out words and stitched broken phrases together. but i nailed those "unfamiliar" sounds instantly. putting my tongue to my palate to make the aspirated L (Ł) felt like coming home. my girlfriend commented recently that i sound so much more confident speaking sm'algya̱x than i do english – a language i've been speaking for 6 times as long. "sm'algya̱x" itself breaks down into two words: "sm=" for "true" or "real", and "algya̱x" for "language".
algya̱g̱u nlip sm'algya̱g̱u. i'm speaking my real language. not automatically, but as a technique that came more easily than what i've known for the first majority of my life. unfortunately, many, many magnitudes more people speak english than sm'algya̱x, so i am far from being able to abandon it, even though it feels like trying to draw as an eight-year-old who has no idea how but is hungry for peer recognition.
am i supposed to like what i do, when it was all i knew growing up? when i learned it merely as a consequence of being alive, as my best bet for communicating authentically with the world?
i developed a more nuanced relationship with art over time. making catlamp emboldened me to translate emotion into characters, into symbols, into composition and colour and contrast. i stopped being as inspired to draw newly announced pokemon. i actually saw myself in my choice of subjects. just as well, i eventually found reason to start reading again. i realized i could see myself in my choice of books, too. i started buying and renting fiction like Challenger Deep and The Lathe of Heaven. in particular i fell in love with Ursula K. Le Guin, and her powerful imagery and symbols. what a writer! i also heard about this crazy new thing called marxism, and got into reading its associated history and philosophy from various authors. what made me unlearn what i was given (english) (mental illness) allowed me to relate to it once again (mental illness). and now, i'm getting back into writing again.
i am making what i was given my own. through mental illness (writing essays on a blog).
though it feels more like my own than ever, i still don't know if i have "fun" drawing. if anything, making art felt the easiest when i was just kindof drawing fandom stuff all the time in the late 10s. i made it a personal goal to make a new illustration every 3 days for my old patreon campaign. it's actually much more difficult now; there's certainly a greater barrier of entry to getting an illustration rolling now than when i was in my early 20s. but i do feel a lot more intentional with it. i'm more fascinated by symbols and what they communicate and what they mean. it just feels like a better reflection of my mindspace. i'm more interested in drawing from my own experience now, i suppose; i've stopped feeling as though my personal semiotics are ontologically stupid. (not that i mind the occasional fandom drawing - looking at you, Elden Ring.)
do i enjoy drawing? at the very least, i know that i don't feel upset when asked, anymore. at the very least, it's my best shot at communicating with the world.
one of the youtubers who lives in my parasocial pantheon rotation is Kevin Perjurer, better known as Defunctland. this tweet of his lives in my mind rent-free. this single statement makes the purpose of this essay completely redundant in understanding my view of my art:
I hate literally every step in the filmmaking process. The only thing I hate more than making a film is not making a film.
– @Defunctland, twitter
but then, it wouldn’t be mine, would it?
footnotes
a phobia of mirrors, or your own reflection.
this is an oft-repeated thing that based on what i've read, seems to hold up to scrutiny: [https://www.science.org/content/article/dyslexia-hidden-language]
(thank you for reading! you can leave a comment on the blog post itself, if you like.)