After too long of a break, I started painting again today. For a few reasons.
One is that I simply enjoy painting and how quickly I’ve improved over the past few years while creating a business for myself. Painting is different from the other arts, music and writing for example. As painting is visual, it can offer instant satisfaction. People can just look at what I painted and enjoy it, and tell me they enjoy it, and compliments are something I never reject; they are also something I often receive due to my painting. Most people don’t care about my piano videos, as you have to like piano to like them…of course. Even less care about my writing, as far too many are too lazy to read, or they don’t like reading, or they can care less about me, and so on and so on. With painting and other visual arts, you just have to look at it. It’s easy.
That’s actually one thing I enjoyed about substitute teaching. I got to draw all day, and I can’t count how many times a student complimented my crude drawings done with nothing more than a ballpoint pen. Best was when I substituted art class and had access to all the supplies and had a slew of students ask me if I studied art in college, if I was an artist, if I could teach the class for now on. Rather funny, since I’m entirely self taught, still awful with perspective, and I find it hard to consider myself an artist in the visually artistic sense.
Like I said, before today I hadn’t painted in far too long—all summer, essentially. Other than the book I wrote and am now editing, my creative juices were ripped out of me and discarded somewhere far, far away. Yeah, I’ve been writing the blog, but it’s nothing monumental. I tried to paint this summer, I did, but I just couldn’t get into it. Everything I did lead me back to the book I’m writing. I haven’t played a videogame in five months now; a year ago I would have thought this impossible. Back in the day I rarely did anything else. Anyway, I finally made myself sit down and paint, and to my surprise I really enjoyed it. More so, it felt so easy and natural—a lot easier than it was before I stopped. It relaxed me, which is something it never did before; it made me think about nothing else other than what I was creating through acrylics. It was almost meditative.
Just a quick back-story. Senior year of college I started painting. Without any training or classes or advice, I was horrible, but I improved rather quickly and now have made $3,000+ from painting with acrylics while watching Netflix—another reason why I had to start again. Money is always needed and wanted, and I love watching Netflix. That, and I have a HUGE backorder of commissions to paint. People keep asking me to paint them things and I have to refuse for awhile due to the backorders. So I really need to sleep less, seeing that writing, working, and the gym consume about 90 hours of my week, and then on top of that I read and see my friends a few nights a week. No time for videogames…must make time for painting again, so the least important thing must go, which is sleep.
This is probably a good thing, since the longer I sleep, the more times I wake up and fall back asleep, the more dreams I have and the better I remember them, and quite frankly, I’m sick of the nightmares. I’m sick of being stuck. More than a month and they still persist. Damn you, unresolved conflicts.
Anyway, so now I’m back to painting on a regularly basis, as I’ve missed it greatly and can already feel the desire returning in full force. But I hate it, and also hate how I discovered my love for visual arts after college.
I’ve been applying to every single videogame company as a QA tester/writer/storyboard scripter/anything to do with writing. Anything. One is every 15-20 companies actually has a writing job opened and most want you to be published with 5+ years of experience—SIGH—while every company has 10-30 art job openings. Think about that. 10-30 jobs per company in the visual arts, so that’s hundreds upon hundreds of jobs, and here I am with this fucking useless English degree. I didn’t learn how to write stories in college. I did that on my own…I learned how to talk about books, discuss poetry, debate, and at least somewhat helpful, I learned how to edit and proofread and be extremely hard on myself. I also learned how to public speak, which is something I love, so I guess that’s also helpful. Even so, if I could do it all again I would A: Not go to UConn but somewhere else far, far away B: Not go for English, but art instead, likely computer art so I could create videogames, and C: Never, ever commute for two years and attend far more social things than I did when I went to college. I was a bit of a recluse and wasted some valuable years.
But that’s why we live and learn, and that’s why I stopped wasting a moment, any moment, at any time.
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