Draw Something Everyday

For more than a year now I have been trying to create a challenge for myself to draw at least one thing every single day. It's a challenge for me because I have a day job that keeps me busy and so, I don't always have a lot of time to get in a drawing or two.

The Mission

When I started this venture, my intention was to establish a habit of drawing and improve my technique. It was by no means intended to interfere with any current client projects nor my own webcomic, but instead, help me manage my drawing time and hone my skill. I've noticed a great improvement in my speed and technique and now if I don't draw something on any given day, I feel as if something is missing.

Let's Inspire

I decided to use the #drawsomethingeveryday hashtag on Instagram to keep track. If you are an artist trying to hone your skills, get into the habit of drawing every day,  I welcome you to join me and the other artists already on there, in populating this hashtag with your daily drawings. Let's inspire others who need inspirations are scared to start. Click the button below to see what's there right now.

Drawing is a movement...forward

My mom was always supportive of me drawing. She would always keep me supplied with plenty of pencils. I never really had a hard time requesting paper either. But, we were not rich, and the supply was limited. I remember using a pencil up until it was so small it I could no longer grip it between my writing fingers. It's amazing how when you have little, you make the best of it. And when you are abundant with things, you tend to take some for granted.

The Doctor Is Out

When I was a kid I also dreamed of being a doctor, but that dream was squashed like an intrusive cockroach. I was hospitalized when I was younger and the needle prodding and poking turned me away from wanting to pursue medicine. Mom always supported me nonetheless.

Curious George

I was about eight years old when she bought me a doctor's toy kit. It was this blue case that held inside all the things that doctors used, except for needles. I don't think there were any in there, or at least I blocked it out of my mind. I tend to do that with things I strongly dislike. Science and biology, on the other hand, I loved. In class, I would always read ahead in the text books because I didn't have the patience of waiting on the teacher's assignment schedules. It was always just so much fun to learn new things. I sometimes laugh at myself because even now as an adult I still have the same curiosity.

Moving Forward

If I could give anyone anything it would be the gift of curiosity. If they don't have it that is. It is one of the things that keeps me sane and in turn, happy. The ability to stay curious allows me to see things differently. That doesn't only come from being an artist but it from being open to new ideas, new suggestions, new ways of doing things. When we open our minds and exert the curiosity that children possess, we evolve; we learn, and in doing so we move miles away from the person we used to be.

If

As the years passed and I grew into the man I am, one poem I came across in my youth that has stayed with me and has resonated a chord in me every time I read it or hear it, is this one:

If— BY RUDYARD KIPLING

Because of the absence of a father in my life, I sometimes envision that these would have been his words to me, and I have been trying to follow every word.

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Poem from The Poetry Foundation

Laugh A Little

To relive my past in my mind can sometimes be hard to me, but I look at what I've accomplished since then, and I can be proud that I have not recycled the behavior that those women showed me. I don't treat my children the way they treated us. That's a big triumph. So many times I hear of parents that beat their kids using the excuse that they were disciplined in the way when they were growing. There was ONE plus side to being held captive, so-to-speak, by these women. I found a way to channel my pain, to divert my anger and helplessness through art. If that's not a positive from a negative, then I don't know what is.

I was threatened on a daily basis if I told anyone what they did to my sister and I. What did they do? Aside from beating us with any object they found, they would throw buckets of hot water on us. One bucket contained boiling water, and I still have the burn marks on my right arm to remember it by. They cower in fear when they did something like that thinking it would show and when my mom's family visited us, they would have to explain themselves. Sneaky ladies, they would do everything possible to cover it up, including threatening me to not talk or they would hurt my sister. My family never found out. Not until I was reunited with them, later on. Still, I learned to channel everything into my art. I communicated through my drawings. I learned to see the funny things, the lighthearted things in everything I look at. I began to dream.

To this day, I still do it. I want to share my art, my stories, my ideas with the world in the form of cartoons. Maybe everyone can laugh along side me, with me or at me; it doesn't matter, as long as they laugh. 

That Damn Belt

I am sure I was affected a lot more than my sister for two reasons:

1. She doesn't even remember it, and...

2. I could not eat because the pain in my chest was bigger than me.

I missed my mom and I did not like these new people in my life. I hated everything about my new environment now matter how much these people tried to paint it with rainbows and unicorns, so-to-speak. I wanted my mom. I wanted to go home.

I must've done this for some time or perhaps these ladies just grew impatient because it wasn't too long before I felt the sting of belts on my skin. Emotional pain can be debilitating and can outlast far longer than physical pain, but a belt touching your skin at 10mph can have very immediate effects. I'm assuming this was what the ladies were aiming for...

What's Missing?

I learned the value of missing someone at a very young age. It wasn't that long before my 6th birthday that our father had left. I vaguely remembered his face and his voice but I did remember that there was a male figure there at some point. How in the heck would I remember the word "papi"? That's what I called him. Yet, I was seven by this time and I was about to be abandoned by the one person I had left to look up to. As a kid, you don't truly understand a sacrifice like this, but as an adult and in retrospect, I'm grateful. But this is about me back then and THEN, I felt that gnawing burn as if your chest is about to cave in and crush your lungs while they burst into flames. The feeling when you could only gasp for air as if you were drowning and what you are reaching for is your last gulps of air. I just described to you what heartbreak felt in the years to come. But back to the story.

Meeting someone whom you're told will replace your mom is like being forced to drink castor oil. It just left a foul taste in my mouth. But what can a 7-year-old do but to swallow it and accept that for how ever long, these three ladies will replace my best friend. "Will I ever see my mom again?" is one of the things that I remember clearly asking myself. That was the question I repeated in my head for weeks after we were dropped off.

To be continued...