When I saw this quote by Brian Fraud I knew I was going to write a blog post about it. My art has always been a way for me to manage my anxiety and subsequent bouts of depression, but it goes a little deeper than that. I guess it’s time for a little back story to explain what I mean, but first I do want to mention that this post contains affiliate links, meaning I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase via this website. 

Back in early 2019 I began carrying around a small 3×5 inch sketchbook as my everyday carry.

I would doodle in it at work on my breaks and on my free time at home. Normally I would just draw little sketches of people or objects that I saw. For the longest time I jumped around from one art form to another. While I enjoyed creating different kinds of art there was nothing too remarkable about them. To be honest the portraits I drew and the landscapes I painted were kind of generic.

Then one day I began doing these weird abstract doodles like the one above. I began posting them on social media and people started to respond to them positively. It was kind of my Eureka moment. I had somehow stumbled onto my very own style or niche just by playing around in my sketchbook. It reminded me of when Jackson Pollock stumbled onto his splatter paintings. (I guess thats what you call them?) 

The coolest thing about doing these sketches is I was completely focused on my art and nothing else. When you create from life you are observing, analyzing, and editing while composing a picture. For me when I was doing these drawings, I was solely focused on the piece at hand and it allowed my mind to wander and to process any problems I might have been having or anxiety that I was experiencing. (I’ll talk more about that in future posts) This style of art became a sort of meditation for me and it helped me process the craziness that goes on in the world or even just in my daily life. When people look at my art sometimes they’re confused as to what they’re looking at. They see a bunch of seemingly random shapes, images, and symbols, but to me each mark I put down is my way of coping with the world. I know this sounds a bit pretentious, but it’s the truth. When I draw a shape I’m not necessarily thinking about the composition, I’m thinking about life. Towards the end of the piece is when I start analyzing it and trying to make to all tie together. That’s when I look at the composition to make sure the lights and darks are balanced and sometimes that’s when I decide to add color. 

Little did I know that these 3×5 inch doodles would lead me to creating large pieces and even paintings.

The piece below was actually featured by The General Pencil Company on their Instagram feed while it was still a work in progress. How cool is that? I’ve used their pencils forever and never thought in a million years that I would have them displaying my art. All of this because I was trying to figure out my life in a sketchbook.

The completed piece below is only the third one that I’ve created in charcoal to date. I actually started working on it back in August of 2020 during a livestream on Instagram but I didn’t finish it until October. I really struggled with it. In full transparency, when I finally did complete it, I didn’t exactly love it. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, I just knew I didn’t like it. I stuck it in my portfolio with the intentions of it staying there forever. 

Forever turned out to be about four months. I pulled it back out and then it dawned on me why I didn’t like it. It seemed very dark to me, but after taking some time to really study it, I realized I was in a pretty dark place in my life and it came through in my art. That’s when the title came to me, “Trying to Understand the World”.

Each piece I create is like this. Sometimes after a little analyzing, I can figure out what they mean to me and other times it takes a while. Many of them I don’t like, but thats not really the point of creating them. It’s not about love or hate, it’s about the peace they bring me during the actual act of creating. Besides like Andy Warhol said,