Hello darkness my old friend

Sometimes I suddenly feel really sad. Nothing bad happened, not particularly about anything either, feels more like it was an old friend revisiting.

“Hello, I’m your sadness from the past, do you still remember me?”
“ Yes, I do. How good to see you again. Let’s sit down together and do some tear-dropping like the good old days.“

Weep. Weep.
The world turns a bit blurry, like watching via a rainy day window.

I recently read a book by Rollo May called Psychology and the human dilemma which talks about how we should embrace negative emotions in our lives, like anxiety. I think this theory is worth applying to the other negative emotions as well. He talked about how we should learn to differ those feels, whether they’re constructive or Destructive ( Neurological）. Because the latter can cause us physically feeling lost control of emotion, which leads to the breakdown of personality or likely becoming apathetic. However, some constructive negative emotions can force you to seek out solutions. If we try to annihilate them. we lose the opportunity to fight, fight for the true freedom.

Here’s a quote from the book:

We must seek a new and deeper understanding of freedom. Freedom means facing and enduring anxiety, while avoiding it means automatically giving up freedom.

So I feel in a world that sells [anxiety] and at the same time sells [the antidote to anxiety], such reflections give inspiration and hope. We are anxious because anxiety is a unique part of who we are. The question is not how to avoid it, but how to face it properly, to recognize what we are really afraid of, so that this ability to connect with the world becomes the courage that helps us solve our problems.

Some of my past favorite sketches were done because I was very sad at that time. They comfort me and help me gone past those rough periods. I don’t want to forget them, because they made me who I am today and because of these experiences, the rare glimpse of happiness in life tasted sweeter and more precious.

Weekend painting

In order to get back to the habit of painting, none- digital style, over the last few weeks, I’ve dedicated one of my weekend days just to paint.

After experimenting with watercolor, oil painting, and acrylic paints, I finally found the media that make me feel most comfortable: Gouache paint. It can deliver both the transclusion texture almost as well as the watercolor. If you use less water, you can paint over the dried part easily just like acrylic. The gouache paint dries in a nice short period of time, not like oil painting, you have to wait for days for it to dry. On the other hand, acrylic dries way too quickly, I have to paint really fast and sometimes I find it is very easy to waste paints.

I remember back in China during the school days, the material we used to paint was also translated as Gouache / 水粉, but not till recently I realized they’re actually Poster Paint / 广告颜料. It is very similar to Gouache, but a lot affordable in price. It’s a shame that the Poster paint can’t be found easily in the U.K., because they could be a great replacement to gouache for me. For example, Studio Ghibli’s most background arts were all done in Poster paint, so the quality is really not that bad.

So by setting myself a screen-free time every week, I find my focus span has also increased. Listen to music and paint just feel so relaxing and therapeutic, especially on a rainy day. It brings me back to my evening art school days. With the smell of paints, distance traffic noise, I and my friends and the teacher shared snacks and occasionally chat. I feel like I could just sit and paint forever.

My last week’s painting is from one of my favourite game Firewatch, the game itself is truly visual poetry, every frame so beautiful that makes you want to live inside the game world. So I pick it as my drawing topic.

Hopefully, more to come!