"Vanity"

One time I was laughing with my brother about "cool" and told him that he might not believe it, but some people think I'm cool.  "I think you're cool" he said.  Huh?  Shucks, thanks?  "But if you think about it you won't be cool any more, so forget I said it."  This was shortly after a conversation I'd had with a friend who told me that I was one of her "cool friends" in high school.  I thought that was really funny and said so.  After all, I had a sibling who spent those years telling me that I was an embarrassment.

The thing is, I never really cared much about what people thought of me.  Once in a while I might get embarrassed if someone caught me in one of my many eccentricities, but living in the woods mostly kept me from that kind of discovery.  Most people that live in the woods are eccentric anyway, so I guess I was "normal" for my environment.

One time a date commented "You know all the cool people".  I looked around at my friends and was kind of surprised to think about them that way.  They were just my friends, mostly artists and musicians.  My kind of people, therefore...?  What?  Maybe artists and musicians are "cool" just because of the types of people they are?

So I've thought about "cool" and what it is, and whether or not I've got any of it even though I think my brother is right in saying that thinking about being cool kind of kills it because that kind of vanity isn't included in the package.  It seems like creative types are inclined towards being individualists which makes them more interesting, and they frequently break the rules.  It also seems to me that most creatives have some life experience, often bad, that inspires the need to express themselves.

When I think about "cool" people, I think that there's a blend between vulnerability, creativity, individualism, daring, and anger.  Okay, I've had all of that.  Maybe I'm a little cool.  Definitely not like the clique in school who used to terrorize us little nerd children, but I'll own being more cool than some.  (Did my vanity just lose me points?)

We're told "be yourself", but often people aren't.  You want to be more cool, you've got to be yourself and not care if "yourself" isn't universally liked and admired.  Somebody will like you, and that's good enough to start with.  If nobody likes you including yourself, check your vanity and figure out why not and make changes accordingly.

We aren't set in stone.  Be whoever you want to be.  The hard part is figuring out what's really "you", what's family and what's society?  How much of what you do is because of or for other people?  Or your idea of what other people want or expect from you?

And since I'm thinking about cool, you've got to admit Pope Francis has got some.  That's why people love him when they didn't love his predecessor.  I had to draw him for work this week.  We aren't going to use this drawing because it's too similar to a stock photo I didn't pay for.  I'm going to try again this weekend because despite the fact you see the Pope all over the media, those photos are expensive.  (If someone's taken a good photo or painted a good painting, let me know and I'll pay a moderate amount for rights to print it.)

Now I'm going to go back to my regular reality which is a little TV and a good book -- which I know isn't all that cool at all on a Friday night, but that's the way I like it :)  To those of you who like magical fiction, I recommend The Name of theWind by Patrick Rothfuss.

"Detective 2"

While I was rooting around in my box to find the woodpecker for my last post, I found the drawing of the boy doing his detective work on butterflies. This seems like a sweeter association for Illustration Friday’s word of the week, so I decided to include them both. The drawing of the boy is 4 ½” x 5”, Prismacolor pencil on cocquille paper. This is an old technique that was a way of doing a drawing on textured paper that allowed printers to shoot the art as line art instead of having to do a half-tone. In other words, by shooting it as line art, the quality was better than if it had to be broken into dots for printing.

Brave

This was an easy Illustration Friday topic for me because this drawing has been sitting on my table for a week. I created it to remind myself of my goals, instead of thinking of my fears in achieving them.

Bravery isn’t necessarily running into a fire to save a baby. Sometimes I think saving a baby would be a lot easier than picking up the phone and making a cold call or introducing myself to someone I should meet.

Bravery is facing and conquering what we’re actually afraid of, and being willing to really look at our fears in the daylight. When I think about sweaty nerves in picking up the phone, of what am I actually afraid? Odds are, whoever picks up the phone will be polite, even if that person is busy, distracted, or mad at their spouse that day. None of that has anything to do with me. The person might like and want my work, and pay me for it. The worse thing that can really happen is that I get a rejection, and even that doesn’t have a lot to do with me. Maybe they’re looking for a particular style, already have someone, or just don’t have money.

When I really look at these kinds of fears, I can see they’re irrational. I can think back to isolated times in my life when people acted inappropriately and created those fears in me. One man yelled the worst insults and cuss words at me when I said I didn’t want to work for him. That’s one guy out of how many people with whom I’ve talked? Seeing fears and facing them helps me pick up the phone and pursue my goals – even if I still get a thumping heart when listening to the phone ring.

This image came to me in a dream, and I woke up in the night to scribble a note to myself. Life seemed to have a lot of clarity in that moment, and it seemed obvious that I needed to create it.

This is a large pencil drawing, 10” x 24”, on hot press bristol board. I use whatever pencil I find handy, including very grainy No. 2 school pencils. My last boss said “A real artist can make art with anything”. I thought he was being cheap, but I suppose it’s true. The main thing about this drawing is to keep me focused on goals, not letting myself get bogged down with having the right art supplies, or worrying about talking to strangers.