mypicklebrain

[mypicklebrain]

#artists on tumblr #illustrators on tumblr #pencil #drawing #portrait #dailydrawing #quick art

[mypicklebrain]

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Die Geometrie des Augenblicks

[mypicklebrain]

#sketchbook #pencil #sketch #artists on tumblr #illustrators on tumblr

[mypicklebrain]

"I'm an anarchist, yes. Because I'm alive. Life is a provocation.... I'm against people in power and what that imposes upon them. Anglo-Saxons have to learn what anarchism is. For them, it's violence. A cat knows what anarchy is. Ask a cat. A cat understands. They're against discipline and authority. A dog is trained to obey. Cats can't be. Cats bring on chaos." - Henri Cartier-Bresson

#henri cartier-bresson #cats #existential angst

[mypicklebrain]

Strychnine Gouache on paper, 10.75x14.75

[mypicklebrain]

Reminiscing

#mixed media #artists on tumblr #art #illustration #illustrators on tumblr #markers #women artists #existential angst #nostaliga #sketchbook #doodlings

[mypicklebrain]

Baby, it's cold outside, so I took my crayons out and grew some oranges.

#illustration #sketchbook #artists on tumblr #illustrators on tumblr #crayon

[mypicklebrain]

An in-betweener

I grew up in a very small town where I always felt like I didn’t fit well. I couldn’t be entirely myself because of how conservative society is there and also due to the fact that everybody knows my parents. So I had to behave. I couldn’t wait to graduate from high school and go to university abroad where I would be free to let out this genuine self I had been suppressing for so long.  So I wound up completely alone in a society that felt entirely alien. And I understand why a lot of my friends wonder how I did it- it sounds daunting. Except that I found it absolutely thrilling. An opportunity to be whoever I wanted however I liked, to wear whatever I desired without being scolded for it on the way out of the house, to meet new people that knew nothing about me, to learn about all kinds of cultures in this profoundly cosmopolitan new place. It was an amazing journey. Still is. 

Inevitably, a point comes where I do miss what is familiar and I long to go home to see my family, to speak my language, to eat the food I love so much and cannot get elsewhere, to smell the sea which I miss so painfully when I am in this other place that is furthest away from it. I can only go for so many months before having the unbearable existential need to go back home. 

Having lived abroad for five years now, having established my own life and my own little family with my loving partner in a small space with our own rules and daily rituals, this also feels like home- one of my own.  Whichever direction I’m travelling between those two countries, I am always simultaneously leaving home and going back home. And I always wind up in a place where I do not fully belong. In this foreign country I will always remain a foreigner, an alien from an entirely different culture. In my home country I will always be labelled as ‘one of those who chose to abandon the motherland’ and even if it wasn’t so, I have now changed so much that it is becoming hard to openly communicate my newly developed views without being dismissed as an overly liberal loon.  For the longest time this troubled me, but I am learning to embrace it. I came to realise that there is no such thing as completely fitting somewhere and that’s what makes life exciting- there is always something to learn and something to teach. I am finding comfort in feeling at home within myself wherever I am geographically. At ease. Now craving a new adventure in a new place. Recognising that consciously or subconsciously, I always, since a very early age, wanted to be just a traveller, perpetually in between belonging and not belonging. 

#existential angst #musings #nostaliga #home #diaspora #belonging #travel #blog #journal #diary entry

[mypicklebrain]

I doodle random lines and curves when I don't know what to draw and it puts me in a super zen headspace.

#doodlings #doodlies #doodle #dip pen #pen and ink #ink drawing

[mypicklebrain]

The pressure to be ‘productive’

I agree that in order to achieve something, you can’t just wish for it and expect it to appear (although if you really focus your mind you can help with attracting it in your life), but you actually have to work for it. However, the lines between working, overworking and beating yourself down for not working enough are easily crossed. I come from a family where labour more or less defines your worth and I’ve been told time and time again since I was very little that making money is hard and requires tremendous effort, takes loads of time and many sacrifices and YOU MUST SUFFER! To my father what I do probably does not qualify as actual work - because it’s intellectual and artistic, not manual and physically exhausting.  Why did I mention this? Well, just as an example showing that different people have different ideas of what it means to do valuable work and therefore to be ‘productive’. Actually, even different parts of me have different ideas of productivity. I often find myself stressing over everything I have to do, planning how and when I need to do it... and waste all of my energy on worrying and not actually acting on all of my tasks for the day and then beating myself down for not having done ‘enough work’. A profoundly counterproductive behaviour! It doesn’t do any good to try and force yourself to ‘be productive’ because nothing comes out of it. Sometimes it’s more productive to take the day off, get back to your senses, calm the f*ck down and get back to it the next day with more confidence.  We live in a society where overworking is glorified, but hell- it’s not glamorous and should not be worshipped. Burnouts are not OK and we should not be striving for them. A burnout is a sign that there is a misalignment of what you are doing and what you crave to be doing, so take a day off, read the book you like, go for a walk in the woods, paint, or just sleep all day- you do you. We are people, not machines created to endlessly and tirelessly generate capital for other people. I refuse to live in a dystopian world where how I feel does not matter and I am expected to override my needs in order to complete a task that means f*ckall to me. No. Just no. I’ll have my day off, please, thank you! 

#existential angst #anxiety #productivity #mindfulness #mental health

[mypicklebrain]

Welcome to my pickle brain, Tumblr! 

#illustration #illustrators on tumblr #digital art #digital illustration #brain #pickle brain #artists on tumblr #trippy visuals #psychedelic

[mypicklebrain]

It must be perfect or else!

I can count on my fingers the projects I’ve ever completed. I could not even recall all of the ones I started and eventually gave up on. And as much as I tried to convince myself that it was because I had more important things to do, that’s a lie. I accused myself of being lazy even, but that’s a lie as well. The truth is that I suffer from a dreadful paralysing fear of imperfection. The moment I finish a project and the final result does not surpass my wildest dreams, I pronounce both it and myself a miserable failure. So to spare myself the bitter disappointment, I have subconsciously kept myself in a state of perpetually starting and working on projects and never, ever finishing any.  And the moment I realised that, I felt simultaneously pathetic and relieved. So here you go- this blog, alongside the purposefully distorted images I draw is me laughing in the face of my demonic perfectionism that has pestered me for the entirety of my life until I finally got to this stage where I am painfully sick of it.  This is me- raw, unfiltered and free, unafraid of how anyone could perceive of what I say or make, uninterested in whether anybody reads any of my writings or sees any of my drawings. This is my existential release of all the unnecessary barriers I or the world around me had created for myself. 

#existential angst #thoughts #new blog