hmm… :) i love this. and i think i experienced it a bit, today. life has been… nothing short of an emotional car crash this last month. God is doing a lot in and through and around me and it’s painful but good. but i’ve been getting way too stressed out. and it’s funny because one of the biggest weights i’ve been carrying around is school. this summer i decided to start listening to God’s call for me to really get committed with my photography. to work on it and use it for Him. all for Him. soooo even though at the end of last semester i had mentally sworn that it would take flying pigs to get me to go back to school, i decided to keep plugging away at community college and that i’d switch my major from communications to photography. (this was a big leap of faith, not to sound cliche, for me)
i haven’t done it officially yet, but i did the research i needed to and signed up for classes that fall under the photog requirements. at the time i didn’t really think twice about the fact that i was about to become an ‘art student’, something i would have never expected to call myself. art was not, in my mind, something worth going to school for. and even as i registered for design 1 and intro to art… i had no idea what i was really getting myself into. i was completely overwhelmed when i walked into my first design class, the first art class of any kind i’ve had since middle school, and looked around at all the graphic designers and comic book artists. i felt like i was WAY in over my head. and… well, i was. haha. i’m now three weeks into the class and i still haven’t got around to purchasing my own bristol pad or pencils- i finally bought a sketchpad last night. haha.
but this brings me back to the quote above… last night, i was hanging with my friend kristyn- and we were up into the wee hours of the morning laughing and attempting to complete this homework assignment that was due today for my design class. and we’re giggling away but in my head and my stomach is this sinking, anxious feeling… because i have NO IDEA what i’m doing. we were supposed to draw three images of the same subject from nature, using different line qualities. that sentence might as well have been in japanese- because i had no idea what that meant. granted, leaving my homework til the night before was not the best idea- but it all kinda flows back to the fact that there was this bubble of anxiety hiding in my stomach. so i did the best i could with kristyn’s help and then woke up this morning and drove to class.
i was so nervous, i almost decided to just skip it. i was so afraid of walking in and looking like an incompetent idiot… that i had a mini panic attack in my car on a back street two blocks from my campus. but something in me pulled through and chided my heart for listening to the fear and i gathered my emotions and pushed them down and walked into class (five minutes late) with my eyes on the floor. and i ended up surviving the four hour class. shocker!! haha. the prof asked us to show our homework, and i hesitated and eventually chickened out when i saw that there were other students who hadn’t done it at all… i pretended not to have it either so i wouldn’t have to show the class my lame attempts. i think my teacher was disappointed, but i couldn’t bring myself to share my half-hearted, rushed work.
we spent the rest of the class time working on a logo. we were supposed to design something that represented us. ourselves. and since i can’t really draw… this was interesting for me. but even though it was uncomfortable and very humbling for me, i worked… and worked… for the entire class. my teacher was helpful as she could be, i feel like i don’t belong and that i speak a totally different language than she does… but i TRIED to get my brain to push the envelope that i’m so used to. i tried to sketch and broaden my horizons and even (SHOCK!) blur some lines.
as a photographer- and just in general- my personality is very observant. i look out at what is around me, and take it in and process and describe. i analyze. i show what is real. but as i was working on this logo, my teacher was challenging me to challenge myself. to frustrate my instincts. and it was definitely difficult. not really fun, and it got quite messy. i started out sketching with a pencil, and then moved to guache (i think this is the fancy word for water color paint. what the who… paint is paint!), and then to charcoal. that… was… ironic. because as i sat frustrated and uncomfortable, trying to think outside the box of my own imagination, trying to see something for what it WASN’T, i literally got my hands dirty… and had to be okay with, embrace even, my mistakes and what i normally would see as flaws- i had to use as a strength.
as my hands turned black and the white pages became covered in smudges i didn’t notice what was happening (internally)… but something was. i left class feeling much lighter then when i arrived, cleaner- despite the charcoal all over my fingers, accomplished- even though i was not really pleased with my work aesthetically. i was thinking differently. more openly, creatively, i’m not sure… but it was definitely almost like i had been cleansed. it didn’t all come together in my mind until i got to work and logged onto tumblr and saw this picture- but now it’s kind of hit me and it’s quite interesting. :) getting dirty… and blurring the lines… left me feeling, in an odd sort of way, cleansed. i never thought that something that is so unnatural and so challenging for me could also be weirdly freeing. hmm…
