Getting back into drawing

Just over a week ago I picked up a pencil and started drawing for the first time in just over a decade (damn saying that makes me feel old). I can't honestly tell you why, I'd like to say it's due to having a lot of time on my hands at the moment but that's not really true. Well it is true I do have a lot of my time on my hands right now but that's been true for the last few months so I have no idea why this happened now... it just kinda did.

Unfortunately for me I got diagnosed with cancer last year, fortunately for me, treatment is going very well, I'm cured I’ve just got a couple more months of chemo to go and with a little bit of luck I've still got a long life ahead of me J. The whole cancer thing isn't why I'm writing this though but it does provide some context.

Due to the treatment leaving me unable to work I’ve had, as I said before, a lot of time on my hands. Until last week I’ve filled that time with gaming, reading as well as seeing friends and family. To be honest it's been great, it might sound like a weird thing to say as chemo is anything but fun! Seriously, chemotherapy 2/10 would not recommend, though it’s considerably better than the alternative so whatchagonado.

Anyway I've always been the kind of person to take what positives I can from a shit situation. Ok it’s not all been great, I’m a person who likes being busy and I enjoy working too so having this much free time is not amazing for my mental health but I’ve done a decent job of fending off most of the existential dread by taking a massive chunk out of my to read and to play pile. Anyway the point I’m slowly meandering towards is, one day last week whilst playing Dark Souls 2 (The best Souls, THAT RIGHT FIGHT ME!) I just suddenly felt like drawing. It wasn’t a powerful urge it was actually fairly casual, my brain was just like “yeah sure why not”. I didn’t really questions it, I grabbed a pencil and drew a little sketch of a character I created years ago for a novel I never finished (yeah another forgotten hobby, I have a few of them). He’s called Sotesh, he’s a bad bloke. Next thing I know I draw a picture of Goku. Suddenly hours have passed and I’m feeling incredibly fucking Zen. There’s this very specific feeling of contentment I get from drawing that I’d totally forgotten, as I said it’s been over 10 years since I last drew. It didn’t matter the drawings were pretty bad and I’d made a load of errors, I just got a lot of satisfaction from the act of drawing, “Journey before destination” an all that (I tend to cheery pick my outlook on life from various books, comics and games, the Stormlight Archive has influenced me A LOT!).

Anyway long story short that was about 10 days ago and I’ve been drawing nearly every day since and don’t plan on stopping any time soon. It feels really good to be drawing again. It feels like I’ve reconnected with an old friend. Speaking of friends, one of mine suggested I make a DA profile....so I did, which you know because you’re reading this, so I guess that the end of this post, it felt good to write J Thanks for checking out my page. Any feedback or constructive criticisms you have for any of my work would be much appreciated; I’m really rusty and have years worth of practice to make up and right now my main goal to git gud at drawing!

Have an awesome day!

P.S. I wasn’t planning on writing this, whilst setting up my profile here I just noticed there was a Journal option so much like the drawing I just kinda started writing. I may or may not update this as I go. Most of what I currently intend to draw is fanart but once I’ve improved a bit I intend to do more original content but we’ll see how it goes.