#ive had this sketch drawn since like junior year of high school

[fcvisuals]

Splash into Space, 2023

New digital illustration just in time for Manatee Awareness month and the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who!

[mcrmadness]

Finally at my parents house I had all three: I was bored, remembered about my old art AND had motivation and time for start browsing my old art.

My mom has boxes full of our old art in her clothes closet and it’s like, full of stuff. I wonder where did I get my mild hoarding habits :DD So anyway, yesterday I just had this moment when I remembered about that box and made my way to the top of that closet (it’s very tiny and has small stairs and the boxes are at the back) and finally, again after years, I got to take a look at my old, old artwork :D

There’s everything from between the ages 7 and 13, I think. I have my “best” old arkwork here at home, I have put them in folders back when I still lived with my parents but that box is mostly drawings that I had no place to store so my mom brought in these boxes for each of us and we would then put all the old drawings there. There were lots of drawings I didn’t remember about anymore but also lots of drawings I did remember. I didn’t browse all of that yet - I’m gonna continue from that tomorrow - but I found lots and lots and lots of stuff that was me desperately trying to create something that would become comic book characters. I know for sure I created my first comic book characters when I was about 9 or 10 years old and I found papers ABOUT these characters and I thought I already had all that here. Since I have all of my “comic book history” saved. I have all the notebooks with those comics here, but didn’t realize I had so much more back at my parents’ house. (And there’s also lots and lots of dinosaur drawings. Most of them seems to have text at the back - I drew them for my dad with a little one-phrase story of what’s happening. It was usually always a dinosaur parent and their kid(s) wandering to somewhere to eat and drink. I might have grown up with the Land Before Time movies...)

Also, to quote my brother: “I see why you like The Sims games.” because I kept creating families. I even created some random cat-anthropomorphic family (I’d quess I was 8-9 years old based on my drawing style) and there were probably 10 papers of that family alone, of them dressed up in summer clothes and winter clothes. Them as a bit older. Then again bit older. And then much older. And I think eventually there were even a new generation in the last papers.

The most interesting one was probably the stuff I did at the last year of that art school I went to as a hobby once a week after school, I attended it for about 5-7 years. The reason for why I wanted to take a look at that box was because I remembered I had some of my old artwork and “sketchbooks” from the art school there and I was curious to know if I really learn a thing in there because the only things I remember from art school is that I had troubles staying in the class because of my concentration problems. I’d have rather been running around the hallways and investigating places with my cousin (who sometimes had to kinda hold me back by saying that we really can’t do that since we’re supposed to do arts here).

I just checked that diploma I got from the art school and it seems that I did in total 4 school years (240 hours) of that at first - this is dated to 2003 when I was 12. And I continued it the next year but it was a differen’t group, it was about drawing and painting, whereas these first 4 years were about the basics of art in general. I don’t remember if I finished with the 5th year or if I already started the 6th, I just remember I was in junior high and I was starting to lose my interest towards the art school. I think it was the 5th year because that year I got more into horses and started my new horse hobby (that eventually led into me becoming a professional equine groomer many years later).

BUT ANYWAY, I noticed I am very good at analyzing my art and handwriting and could use that to track the art to correct years as I didn’t often have any dates written on stuff, but just based on my comic style (as I just had to include these doodles _everywhere!), I was able to tell that “yes, I drew this one when I was 12, for sure!” And I was right. I estimated that this one acrylic painting I did was from when I was about 11 or 12 or so, and I found the “sketchbook”  and I actually had written quite a nice story there. Very cliché, but I really liked the writing style, especially for it being written by someone who was only 11-12 at the time. The sketchbook’s cover said IV which means it was tha last year of the basic education aka I indeed was 11-12 when I did all that.

Then my brother found some huge drawing that had drawings that looked like something I used to draw, I didn’t even remember about them anymore but I told him that those look exacty like what I did when I was 12 or 13. He also found some huge unfinished drawing that was done with charcoal and I didn’t recognize it, I had no memory of it so I said it’s probably something by my mom because I doubt I had such good drawing skills back then. Then I found a sketch book for that course and based on the comics again, I said it’s probably from when I was 12 or 13. And then I found the sketch of that CHARCOAL DRAWING. So it IS mine, after all? I don’t remember doing it at all, but it looks actually really good and I can’t believe it’s me who has drawn that. I also found a painting and the sketch for that painting from the sketchbook, and I couldn’t say if I used oil paints or acrylics on that. Somehow I have a feeling that it was oil paint but really the only thing I remember from that is how we built the frames on our own and stapled the fabric on it to really do the whole painting from scratch, like literally. The painting itself is not that good - I have never really been a painter. I’m more of a drawer - pencils, colored pencils and fineliners are my thing. I like details and small pictures, and paintings were always so big and huge things and hard to come up with anything because my details still were too small for painting. I like when I have full control over things I do and I could never achieve that with paint, I just never really understood how to work with that - watercolors, acrylic or oil - and I ended up actually hating that because I always only made a mess, and I kinda got an overdose from all that painting because I never really liked it but it felt like it was the only thing we ever did, or that we did that a lot more often than just regular drawing.

I also found some drawing I had done with pencils and I don’t know if it was for regular school or the art school, and it had no year or class number on it, it looked actually pretty good and I really liked how I had worked with the shadows. The human character looked like it didn’t belong into the picture, without him I’d have guessed it was from when I was maybe even 13 but with him I’d say I was rather 11. But it’s so weird because I had drawn there a tiny abandoned house, and the whole drawing was very abstract with some sort of weird cloud, and all that looked so much more “professional” than the human figure. So I have no idea when or where or what was that for, but I’d love to know what was the story behind that. It looked like some serious assignment.

Anyhow, I think I will take out that box tomorrow (or actually today as it’s 7am and I should be sleeping already) because my dad asked if we can browse the drawings together, and that could be lots of fun too. I really want to bring the box to home eventually. There’s so much interesting stuff and lots of memories in those drawings, and I think I might want to take photos of some of the most interesting ones.