A Kid Who Loved to Draw

Rediscovering a lost art

I was a kid who loved to draw. All through elementary school, I’d find any opportunity to bust out a blank sheet of paper and color it up with cars, skyscrapers, that “S” every single 90’s kid knew how to draw — whatever came to mind. In class, I’d race to finish my assignments early just to have a few sweet minutes to go ham in my wide-ruled spiral notebook. I was a straight-up, gel-pen-wielding Basquiat (for the uninitiated: gel pens were THE artistic tool of the late 90’s and early aughts).

Somewhere along the way, though, I stopped drawing. Part of it may have been newfound adolescent interests (butts, for example) suddenly occupying more of my mental space than in years past. I don’t think it helped, though, that my artistic proclivities constantly got me into trouble in school. Drawing outside of art class — at least in the No Child Left Behind era — was a strictly clandestine activity. I had to carefully flip back and forth between my artwork and the “real work” I was supposed to be doing, lest the teacher think I wasn’t paying enough attention, my ‘A+’ in the class being immaterial. Art class was for doing art. Math class was for doing math. History class was for learning about the Panic of 1893 (why teach the geopolitical failings of the mid-to-late 20th century when we can just repeat them?).

Gradually, it became easier not to draw and to pretend to pay attention instead. The drawings became unrealized ideas in my head and, eventually, the unrealized ideas in my head became nothing. If you were an artsy kid, maybe you experienced something similar.

Rediscovery

Alex Lopez recently shared an excellent quote from artist and author Hugh MacLeod (check out Alex’s newsletter,

love & liberation daily

, if you haven’t already):

The quote reminded me of how much I used to love drawing. Of letting my imagination run wild without much thought to what I was drawing or why. As adults, there’s an assumption that everything we do has to have a purpose: I’m jogging so I can run a 10k, I’m learning Portuguese so I can visit Brazil, I’m going on a keto diet so I can mention to anyone who will listen that I’m on a keto diet.

When did we all stop fucking around? Doing stuff for shits and giggles? Why is “just ‘cause” no longer enough?

Around the same time I saw the quote Alex shared, I came across

Beth Spencer

’s newsletter, Introvert Drawing Club. A drawing club? For introverts? Yes and YES.

It was time to get my crayons back.

Taking inspiration from a few different prompts, I drew this (source material included side-by-side for those not familiar with the reference):

Yes, that’s the Shel Silverstein you’re thinking of. The Giving Tree guy. Turns out he was a lil’ freak and we love him for that.

The verdict? It was time well spent. Doing something silly and creative got me out of my head — out of worrying about whether I’d been productive enough that day, or whether I was working on the “right” things for my career. It also inspired this piece (which means the drawing didn’t end up being entirely for grins and I’m therefore a giant hypocrite). But there’s probably a lesson in that as well that setting aside time for fuckaroundery is beneficial professionally. More importantly, though, it was enjoyable. And life being more enjoyable is, you know, generally a good thing.

So maybe we should all spend a little less time trying to achieve our goals and a little more time fucking around just for the fuck of it. But if my goal is to fuck around more, and I succeed, have I failed at my goal of accomplishing fewer goals? I’ll let you puzzle that one out yourself.