Finding Creativity

I was thinking about creativity a week or so ago and lamenting that I seem to have lost a lot of mine in the past year. A few days before my grad reunion a friend of mine showed me a water colour she had just had printed up as a card. As an artist who enjoys painting in the field she too is trying to find her creativity during these cold months and she manages to do it and inspires me. But before I could really start to try for a good drawing (eventually a painting) my grad reunion was upon me and I made the reluctant trip down to the coast, prodded by the nagging of a friend.

Drawing anything and everything when I was a child

 In the course of touring the high school and listening to various people’s recollections of events and incidents during their school years I really tried to recall highlights of what was for me a horrible time.

I was a fan of Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber

 It wasn’t until the evening of the dinner that I really started to enjoy myself and acknowledge that I didn’t harbor any resentments because the people who had tormented me then didn’t leave behind any memories at all- and the few who did seemed a bit sheepish but kind and surprised me by remembering me as an artist.

I was so into comics and character designs!

 And it wasn’t them who quashed my artistic spirit: I spent this evening going thru all my old artwork looking for a picture of that nagging friend who asked me if I still had the “pictures you used to draw of me”. I feel so regretful that I must have either given them away or even destroyed them in a fit of anger over something. I am determined to draw another one of her and send it to her.

But it was while looking over all these old drawing I took the time to sort them by year and see that I wasn’t hampered by any insecurity over art at the time- or at a loss for ideas on what to draw. I drew what interested me at the time and was even objective enough to know where I needed most to improve and notice that what was flat in the 8th grade became rounder and more 3 dimensional by my senior years. I enjoyed looking at the remarks of Mrs. Eggenburger and then later Ms. Graziano on the backs of the drawings.

Illuminated letter project and the The box art project :

 I kind of got encouraged about creativity all these years later and delved into the later art as well and realized that some kind of insecurity has been hampering me lately that wasn’t present during high school or my years in China.

I wasn't scared of water colour then!

The moral of the story is it might actually be good to go back into your past and take a hard look and what you achieved despite any and all obstacles. Even if high school was hell on earth, people can be gracious decades later, reconnect with old friends and generally enjoy the show…hopefully the creativity will follow!

Some yearbook signatures