Art is a Powerful Thing

One day, I did a series of little crayon observation drawings — one of my neighbor's foot, another of a friend's face, and an attempt to draw a pelvic bone that ended up looking like Brain from the cartoon Pinky and the Brain (a deep, complex show about two lab mice who try to take over the world).

I posted pictures of the drawings on Facebook last night and ten minutes later my inbox said "17 new messages" — all of them comments from 4 individuals. This morning, there were 32 new messages since last night. I kid you not.

Having gone from drawing basically every day, all day, non-stop to only drawing a few times a week, it feels nice to get feedback on what you do accomplish. On the other hand, it feels weird to get stronger reactions to a 5 minute 3" by 3" drawing of someone's foot than to a 18" by 24" oil painting that took two weeks to complete.

When I regularly posted artwork on the gallery site deviantART.com, I found that my old fan art of video game and Disney characters still gets more traffic than my new paintings, drawings and photos, which feels very strange since I feel that the new pieces are way better in terms of effort and quality.

On the other hand, it's really neat to watch the conversations that develop from a piece of art, whether it's a crayon foot or Moorish tile work, and I am not about to tell people not to make such interesting comments like:

"That is the sexiest algae-green haired teletubby [referring to a portrait of someone, not an actual teletubby] that I have ever seen… I can not tell a lie… oh, and that mouse is[name of a friend]."