Picture of You

I’m an artist. Those of you who follow my blog, you know this. I don’t sell any of my work, but I do like to display it. My bedroom walls are covered with artwork that I’ve done whether drawn with pencil, pieced together with paper, done with pastel, or built from wood. I’ve even started filling up the walls in a separate room with my paintings. It’s enjoyable for me to be able to sit at my desk and look around the room at the artwork I’ve done. Each one has a story. Each one has a purpose: whether it involves my novel or was my best artwork in high school.

This leads me to the picture featured in this blog post. It’s sort of a random drawing if you think of it, but it was done with drawing pencils, black pens, and ink. It’s a drawing my from college days. I took a class and the assignment was to “play” with shading and how different black and white media stands out against each other. The assignment could not be done all in one day. We were given a time period (I don’t remember how long) and we had to add just a couple items in the picture at a time. It could be something that was on our mind or something we saw, but it had to pertain to us in some way. Then, we had to connect everything together by stringing something across the page.

In a sense, this assignment was to create a picture of you without drawing your physical appearance. I remember the day mine was critiqued in front of the class. It was one of the more favored drawings that day. Everyone liked how the longer they looked at it, the more they saw. From the small details in the cheetah’s face to the notes of my high school theme song hiding on the side of the page. I tried stringing everything together by my favorite Bible verses: the Armor of God. In my opinion, I did a terrible job at it, but it just goes to show that nobody’s perfect.

This drawing was done in the year 2014. It’s the only drawing my college days that made it on the wall of my room. Not because it was the best, but because it felt the most like me. If I were to repeat the assignment, I probably wouldn’t put the same things on it. I’m still a Christian, still love cheetahs, the moon, Legend of Zelda, and Pokemon, so those items would still find its way on there, but the caged bird would probably be freed, the SmashBros. symbol would disappear, and the chains would be taken off. I’d probably add more animal species that I’ve worked with and the symbol I use for my novel would be one of the most prominent things on there. It’s a good reminder of growth and what I enjoyed then verses now. Granted, not a lot of things would change, but I would do quite a bit of it differently today.

So, what about you? What would be on your picture of you? Animals? Games? Symbols from books, movies, TV shows, companies, some abstract art that defines you? And how would you string it all together? It doesn’t have to be brought together by words, it could bubbles, or snakes, or lightsabers, whatever is you! I dare you to give this exercise a shot. Take a piece of paper and draw something new on it every day. Use different media so that some details hide in the background and others are more prominent. Make it the picture of you.