Drawing and Me--Am I an Artist? (Ep. 2)

Drawing and Me--Am I an Artist? (Ep. 2)

"My Passion for drawing"--Well, I'm not sure if passion is really the right word to describe the relationship between drawing and me. I was probably not that passionate from the beginning, or my passion--if I ever had--abated over the years with some changes in my environment. 

Our family moved quite often when I was a child, and I've been a tenkosei (that's how people call you first when you move into a new school--meaning a transfer student) twice, in my elementary school and middle school. Switching schools is actually not very common in Japan so you rarely see tenkoseis at school. However, my parents were always looking for a better place for the growing family (we have total of 7 children), so sometimes it wasn't avoidable for us to change our schools despite my parents' best efforts not to do so.  

 Drew these for this blog post based on just my memories from back in 2000 ish. 
I don't usually draw Pokemon other than Pikachu.
I used to be able to draw some of them better back then.        

When I first transferred to a new elementary school, I was a fifth grader. On the first day of school, I couldn’t still believe that I had zero friends at school and had to start making them again from scratch. Contrary to my anxiety, however, my classmates were very accepting and excited to have me as a newcomer, so I became friends with them very quickly. I wanted my friends to know my best hobby and what I was good at, so I showed my talents as an “artist”. I showed off my Pokemon drawings to my friends and they were blown away by my drawing skills, because I was able to draw most of the 151 pokemons with details and accuracy without looking at the original pictures. Soon I became famous among the children in the same grade, and many of them requested me to draw pokemons all the time.

Pokemons with some more movement (June 2015)

Two years later, I was 12 and became a middle school student, and there was a new trend among my friends: Pokemon is only for kids. By kids, we meant younger than middle school students. Yeah sure, we weren’t kids anymore since we had graduated from elementary school few months ago. Anyways, we all “stopped” playing Pokemon about at the same time Gold and Silver came out because we didn’t want to look nerdy or childish (I played Silver… ;)), and I stopped drawing Pokemon for the same reason (except for Pikachu since it was acceptable to all somehow).

So, since I used to be drawing only Pokemon, I had to decide what to do to keep satisfying my desire to draw after that commitment. Then I had this very good friend in my class who also liked drawing and manga. I cannot remember exactly how we ended up doing it, but we both boldly started drawing original mangas for the boys in class. Our mangas became pretty popular with them and they always came to our desks to read the mangas on breaks. 

My manga continued for almost a year, and I used so many notebooks for that. They must be still somewhere at my parents house in Japan but I don't know where they are now; even if I knew, I wouldn't post my manga here on my blog, though, since it's too embarrassing. Plus, it was only good enough to entertain middle school students who didn't have anything to do during break times, so yeah, I think it was pretty bad actually :) I would just say that the manga I drew was strongly influenced by the mainstream battle mangas that were popular back then, such as One Piece and Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi!. 

Anyways, I loved my school and friends a lot, and I was so comfortable with everyone in class that I wasn't afraid of showing my true self. Everything was perfect at school... but it didn't last long; I had to transfer to another school as the first meddle school year was over. I hated it so much more than the first time, and this transfer hugely affected my relationship with drawing...

On the first day at the new school, nobody spoke to me but my teacher. Well, I was new in class and people in there were all sensitive adolescent teenagers after all so they must've had a "stranger-danger" or something, which was why they were all too shy to speak to me or to give me even a single glance. ...Oh wait... I was the same age as all of them...

Something is wrong in this school--this was my first impression. 

They all seemed to be extremely indifferent to each other and kind of afraid of something or someone; there wasn't a single person like any of my former classmates who was welcoming, delightful, and full of energy. Yes, this school was the strangest school in Japan, and I'm not really exaggerating it. I hadn't known until later, but this was one of the most notorious schools in the country for its delinquents and their crimes. Due to this, people were actually afraid of doing something stand out and cause themselves being picked on by the delinquents. 

This is not the original stick figure doodles from my textbook
but I always, always drew something like this in class...           

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do" was what I did at this new school. Basically, I decided not to socialize with people at school for the next two years, until the graduation. Well, I ended up making some "friends" after all but kept building a strong habit of hiding my true self during the two years. After I started going to this school, not only I stopped drawing manga but also stopped drawing anything other than stick figures that I couldn't help drawing in my textbooks during class. Drawing stick figures was fun enough to distract me from the depressing atmosphere in the classroom; also, it somehow lessened my "withdrawal symptoms" for drawing.

However, after I found there were few people in my class that were from the art club of the school and saw their art works, I couldn't be as happy with my doodles as before. I was shocked with their abilities to express themselves through their arts as well as their drawing/painting skills. I had never seen very great artists who were of my age till then, but they were totally on a different level... At that moment, I remembered that many people used to praise my drawing skills and I also used to flatter myself that I was a pretty good artist, but then, I realized that I was nothing more than an ordinary guy who can only draw stick figures. I felt ashamed for being deluded. 

I had completely lost my imagination and creativity that I began cultivating little-by-little with my buddy at the previous school.

...I knew I wasn't an artist.