Charging Buffalos

(Photo/Drawing: by me)

I have decided to take a course! It is mostly to push me back into doing something that I have always loved to do. I stumbled across it while surfing the Algonquin website for the kicks. Of course the title, "Drawing at the museum of Nature" caught my eye instantly. A combination of two loves? Yes please.

Since high school my artistic drive has gone out the window. Not because I allowed my passion to die but simply because it was swallowed by the mass amount of papers, reading and studying caused by University. I was taught other things, refined my writing skills (or so I hope to believe) and expanded my view of the world in general. But time was not something I had the luxury of. I didn't read for fun, I didn't pick up my pencils and draw for hours, I didn't pull out my easel on a whim... none of those things were options. I'm not really complaining, any spare time I did have I spent sleeping or trying to be social and I think those things are important too. University was rewarding in many ways and I parted with new skills under my belt. But old habits die hard and the art bug has reared it's ugly head once more.

I suppose it would be unfair to say that I left all arts behind once I embarked on my University adventure. I did scrapbook, and scrapbook I did. Hours poured into sorting, organizing, glueing and designing pages of pictures and cut outs. It was easy to lose myself in it, feed my nostalgic side and ease the stress of life weighing down on me. It was something new and different that I temporarily replaced drawing and painting with. It was easy to drop in a second and pick up in a moment. It isn't that easy with other mediums.

So I have decided to take a course. A course that will help me refine my skills and re-teach me many of the things I have forgotten as my talent whittled with age. So far so good, I think. I was worried I would walk in there and forget how to draw the basic shapes. That I had lost all the experience I gathered over the years and reverted back to childhood drawings. I think I did alright, not wonderful or anything, but I was never an amazing artist to begin with. The sketch above was the first attempt that class. I moved onto a moose, a more detailed buffalo and even the head of a bison. They were all mediocre but better than I had hoped. The charcoal and graphite sticks just moved instinctively, as if I were born holding them. Despite the screaming children, the playful toddlers, and the photo-clicking tourists I was able to focus. I would like to say I'm an already focused person. But the real focus, the deep concentration, has only ever come through art. I'm lost in it, found in it, and live in it. There's a sense of invincibility that comes with it. The surrounding world can't touch me and I can live in a space available only to me. The sensation is freeing.

I have found my calm. A calm otherwise only provided by God and maybe even this is God's way of giving it more easily to me. Otherwise, outside of that element I am more like.... a charging buffalo.