Art

@calypteanna

Thank you for sharing this. I really like it. I also find your handwriting very pretty

@calypteanna It's beautiful and expressive keep going. I'm also an artist and couldn't pick up my brush and pencils for nearly more than 15 years , various reasons and trauma relates. But in 2018 I started art journalling nothing note worthy at least in my mind. I couldn't even express so I would just copy draw. Till I got my art going. It's helped me tremendously express and heal. Keep going and keep creating. Doesn't matter how big or how small.

In my early twenties, I carried a sketchbook with me everywhere I went. I can remember where I was and what was happening from each drawing in those sketchbooks. It's sort of like a record, but abstract, the reality hidden and yet exposed at the same time.

I was out with my 'boyfriend'. We were travelling home in the rain on public transit. He was talking the whole time, as per usual, while I listened. Our relationship was failing, but we both weren't ready to face what was happening. He was driving me away, hoping that if he became cruel enough, I'd leave so he wouldn't have to reveal his secret. While he spoke, I drew this. I hid the drawing by pressing the sketchbook to my breast. My coat had fur lapels wet from the downpour, and when I peeled the sketchbook away it left smears that blended in with the image so seamlessly, I knew it was almost time to let go. We broke up a month later.

When I was a kid, I especially enjoyed drawing animals that I saw. These two are from when I was eight or nine. While on a trip to the grocery store with my mom, a clerk emptied a bin of oranges and at the bottom of it was an exotic wasp. Excited, the young man showed it to me. I asked if I could take it home to draw it. I'd never seen such an insect before. The ovipositor was as long as my finger! It was like discovering magic existed to see a creature so far outside what I was familar.

This is a pheasant that my neighbor owned. He kept it in his yard behind a tall, picket fence. I remember squatting close to it, peering through the slats to catch a glimpse of the colorful bird and catalog it on paper:

Out of the thousands of drawings from childhood, I only have a few that survived multiple moves, losing most of our posessions, and uninsulated storage. Honestly, I'm not even sure how I have any of them.

There was a short period of time where I returned to this type of activity - cataloging animals through artwork. I was much older, 23 or 24. This is where I peaked out, and then I stopped drawing almost altogether.

From my 'last' sketchbook:

I was most alive when I observed and remained present with the natural world.

One more today. Going back... I don't know. I don't know why I'm doing this to myself.

During the worst times, my drawings steered away from the natural world and more into the fantastical or comical. I drew purely from my mind instead of from observation. I'm not sharing these drawings because I rather hate them. I hate what they represent - the disassociation. Yet, I keep them as a record of where I was, or where I wasn't, I suppose. Usually they are of children or other animals playing and leading happy, carefree lives. I would not think of anything else if I could help it.

I have one sketchbook from when I was 16 and living in a van. I'd come back to reality then, sort of. I started drawing an alter-ego of a devious, self-assured little girl whom caused trouble wherever she went. Oh, teenagers!

The following is the sort of thing I would draw most often around that time. I personified feelings as monsters or dragons. While I was sketching this, my mother and I were in the van, trying to sleep at a public park for the night. A homeless man came to the window and started flirting with my mom. I remained silently scribbling, ready to act, until he went away without incident (thankfully).

The window in the room we slept in at a homeless shelter. This is what I'd stare at for hours when I couldn't sleep:

In essence, this sketchbook seems like a sign that I didn't start to process being eleven years old until I was sixteen.

Your art is amazing. And I like the way you are exploring your past posting and reflecting on your drawings.

And God, your handwriting. I know I said it before. I am getting obsessed by it. The way you write the letters L and T (this has changed over time) for instance. I would love to have my next tattoo with that handwriting. It just, I don't know, feels so real.

I am in love with the dragon...the best dragon schtch I've seen so far...I am a fire dragon in chinese zodiac so I really like the dragon alot...and the way you draw eyes...

@calypteanna

We thank you for your art and embelishing our dull lives...I truly envy you for having an artostic soul...😉😊😔🤗

@calypteanna

you are very good!

@calypteanna, this is a very good subject to talk about for me. I've always been creative. Drawing, random doodles, and especially loved making things (crafts).

I haven't drawn in a long time. The last drawing was a bird, which I gave to my lover. Drawing it however felt very forced for some reason. I think that's mainly because she's always encouraging me to start being creative again.

A few years ago, as a gift, she gave me a big box filled with all sorts of artsy things. 90% of the items untouched to this day.

This weekend she asked me to help her with one of her activities needed for university. It was to make moldings of two animals out of play doh.

The moldings needed to have texture etc. To my surprise (internal feeling) I thoroughly enjoyed making it. I felt that tranquil feeling again that I always used to feel in that moment. I purposefully took my time. You know that feeling of admiring the end result? I felt that for the first time in years.

Life and adulting happened, which is why I stopped in the first. It resulted in me losing my inspiration, love and joy for it all. Most of all, I always feel like I never had me time. Everyone's always like "oh then make time". I'm sure they're right but each person's life is different you know? The person telling me to make time may not have things constantly pulling them in different directions thus resulting with no space left for me.

Anyway. For the last few weeks I've been planting subconscious seeds in my head about doing all of this for myself again. It's been sitting there in my head. For some reason though, nothing's become of it and I don't know when or if it ever will turn into reality.