A Sketchy Blog Post
“I’ve been drawing a lot of stick figures recently,” my church friend Lynne told me a few weeks ago. Lynne hosts an “Art and Scripture” group at my church, providing a brief Bible passage prompt for people to respond to in whatever visual medium they choose.
She showed me her sketchbook, which included several brief pencil sketches of characters from the Bible. She told me about some of the images she had in her head that she’d come up with from reading. Our conversation sparked some ideas in my head. It also reminded me of some ideas I’ve had for a while and done nothing with.
I attended her group once a couple years ago and had a blast (a quiet, focused blast) using colored pencils to illustrate the images of a Psalm. I haven’t gone back to Bible art since then, but it’s been in the back of my mind, waiting.
When I was a child, I loved to draw. I drew just about anything I could think of: fantasy characters, superheroes, dragons, castles, robots, spaceships, city skylines, imaginary world maps, trees. My family members bought me pencils, markers, and instruction books for birthdays and Christmases. My aunt once sat down with me and taught me some things about shading and perspective.
Unfortunately, like many things in my life, drawing kind of fell by the wayside as I grew up, studied literature and writing in college, and began to work for a living.
And that’s when perfectionism (and, frankly, some joyless utilitarianism) stepped in. You know, that feeling that if you haven’t done something in a while, or if you do that thing and it looks awful because you haven’t done it in ages, then you shouldn’t even try going back to it because it’s just going to be a waste of time...
Meanwhile, I watch other people draw and make visual art as a hobby, side gig, or career—and do so with excellence—and wish I could do it, too.
I know, that doesn’t make any sense. I could do it if I really wanted to, because there’s nothing actually stopping me from picking up the pencil and paper.
But my brain is weird; there’s some sort of block preventing me from deciding to go back to sketching as a hobby again. The same block that kept me from writing for a long time after losing a previous job. The powerful block of fear and failure. Of shame and regret. Of “I don’t know if I have time for yet another creative activity.” I’ve had the same thoughts about eventually returning to music (I used to play piano, trumpet, and ukulele at different times in my life).
These sketchy thoughts want to take me down a dark alleyway and mug me. They might have already done so, and I’m just lying on cold concrete in a daze from getting jumped by my own shadow monsters.
That’s why I’m grateful for people who encourage me. My return to writing and blogging is partly a result of enough people consistently telling me for years that I needed to go back to it. My return to drawing, if such a thing takes place, will likely happen in a similar way (and if it does, I’ll blog about it, of course).
It’s almost like I have to give myself permission to do it and enjoy it. American culture isn’t the friendliest to the idea of doing something artistic “just because.”
I recently tried this with photography, and I’ve now used several of my own iPhone pictures as starting points and featured images for this year’s blogs (including this one). But iPhone photography is fairly simple and efficient: all it requires is the device, a brain that’s looking out for potentially artistic scenes or moments, a few moments of shutter-snapping, and a few minutes of tinkering with the photo on my phone.
Drawing requires slowing down and taking my time with a pencil and paper. And slowing down is still something I’m learning to do, too.
But…maybe I could start small. Maybe I could just start with stick figures, like my friend Lynne said she’s drawing. Or trees. I like trees. Maybe I shouldn’t focus on how straight or perfect my lines are (“If you can’t draw a straight line, just draw a wrinkled one,” as my friend Grace would say). After all, I really have nobody to try to “impress” with my drawing.
Maybe I need to interview my little kid self—he’s still a part of me, but now he has a full-time job, a church ministry role, a house, and a dog—and remember how to play.