Picked up the Pencil again

I thought about the days I drew. When little boys played football with crushed cans and little girls talked and talked as means to escape the pressure of school and home. I left myself in a lonely corner with only a pencil and pieces of paper to keep me company.

Drawing a rough draft of a comic I'm working on
Drawing is my escape, that's how I put it, from the harsh reality of growing up. I found solace in my doodles and shared it with no one. I am like a child who found comfort in imagination. The imagination, to me, is my most prized part of myself. It is a universe than nobody understood except me and that was enough.

It wasn't until years later that I learned to share this hobby openly, and it was my first step towards opening up to people. Most of my friends even joined in with the hobby, creating equal passion. It felt rejuvenating then, but it wasn't until I met two friends when Drawing became my whole world.

Daus and Jessie during our last time together
I was tremendously grateful when I met them. It was a life changing experience. Daus and I would try compare drawings and also try to draw our own styles of each others characters. Jessie, on the other hand, tagged along and we would talk about comic book ideas.

Even today Jessie still has her ideas pouring into her notebook. After the split between SMJA and SMR, Daus stayed in SMJA while Jessie and I went to the new school. This time, I tagged along with Jessie. I remember some of the conversations we had about Anime/manga Jessie and I had. Sometimes I'd make a face whenever she made her manga plots but I understood every word. We would draw and discuss and talk and have lunch everyday.

It was during these four years when my drawing hand began to fade. I lost touch of the pencil and ink that I almost completely forgotten the feel of the lead scratching on the white piece of paper. It was when I found other hobbies like guitars, good movies and complex books. I found Rugby and most importantly, I found love.

And it was during my heartache when I picked up the pencil again.

There was a saying I remember, 'Poets exploit their emotion', it was true that I found relief in pain as I weaved the thread through stories similar to my pain, then complex questions plague my head became the basis of my writing. Jessie even said they became more psychological, shifting the change from my earlier action oriented artworks. The more I drew, the more I realize that my absence in my imaginative universe had refined my skills.

Today, I see the world in the movement of my hand. I created reality from canvas to canvas and in them are stories with depth and issues. I wish Daus someday might come back so we can relive the past and talk about how much we changed.