social media has really warped our perception of creativity and hobbies. Stop doing things to post them. Just write. Just journal. Just sketch. Just read. Just annotate. Just sing. Just crochet. Just do the thing you’re going to do with the assumption no one will ever see or know you did it. Stop performing. Just enjoy it.
So earlier in art class today, someone drew a characters hands in their pockets and mentioned that hands are really like the ultimate end boss of art, and most of us wholeheartedly agreed. So then, our teacher went ahead and free handed like a handful of hands on the board, earning a woah from a couple of students. So the one from earlier mentioned how it barely took the teacher ten seconds to do what I can’t do in three hours. And you know what he responded?
“It didn’t take me ten seconds, it took me forty years.”
And you know, that stuck with me somehow. Because yeah. Drawing a hand didn’t take him fourth years. But learning and practicing to draw a hand in ten seconds did. And I think there’s something to learn there but it’s so warm and my brain is fried so I can’t formulate the actual morale of the lesson.
Yesterday I took this picture, it’s a building site at a train station. The scale of it is immense and on this picture you can’t even see how deep it goes. I send it to a friend with the text “ruins of the modern Netherlands”, in a way it feel like a ruin this building site. There is a contrast though, because it’s also a new beginning.
For a long period of time I have felt the urge to start printmaking again, so this is what I have tried to do. It’s the white plate on the right picture, it was a progress picture. I finished the plate yesterday and I’m looking forward to how it will print.
A piece I made a while ago, was thinking about self care, beauty and mental health while making this. I was thinking about how I compared myself to people on social media, a sort of ideal fantasy life. Self care looks a lot different to me and to every individual, I’m still trying to figure out what it means to me and how I should approach it. Everyday I’m learning more.