Why I started drawing again after 20 years, and why I quit in the first place.

Going back, almost as far as I can remember, my first loves were always Star Wars and super hero comic books.

And from that love of comic books I got the desire to draw and over time wanted to be a comic book artist more than anything.

From the time I was very young, and all the way up through high school, I loved to draw my own comic books and created countless versions of my own super heroes and universes.

As I got older I eventually got the internet and soon began to seek out other kindred spirits who also shared my love of comic books. This lead me to create a Yahoo Club back in the day (which later Yahoo would change the name to groups) called Original Comic Creators Club, or OCCC for short.

This club was full of lots of *very* amateur artists like myself and we would share our love of comic books and eventually started to create community comics where we took turns writing and drawing sections of the same comic book and I created a web site later to display and hold all the work we did together. As time went on the club grew to around 3000 people if memory serves.

So what went wrong? Why did I disband the group, stop running the website and eventually give up drawing and comic books? Life, mostly...

The turning point was two-fold in the fact that as I got older I lost part of my creativity and imagination because I became disillusioned and tired from work.

For one thing I finally stopped pretending to go to college and got my first full time job working in an industrial factory.

I would have to go and work 12 hour shifts of reasonably physical labor and then come home too tired to do anything creative. Pretty soon, life just stripped the desire to be creative right out of me and I stopped taking the time to draw and have dreams. It happens to the best of us as we get older.

But, if I am honest that wasn't the only reason...

Growing up I was never really privileged enough, or smart enough, to get any real art training and truly grow as an artist as I should have.

I was also lazy as an artist and never really worked in ways that I should in order to get better and more versatile as an artist. I didn't draw every day and when I did draw I always just drew for fun and never really pushed myself to broaden my horizons. I didn't listen to what little guidance I did get because I wasn't that bright and I doubt my brain had fully formed enough to take the proper advice anyway.

All these factors and some other issues lead me to a point in my young life when I looked at my art, and my skill level, and I became disillusioned with what I saw. So I did what I thought was the realistic decision to do at the time, and I quit.

It didn't help that at about the same time in life I stopped buying monthly comics at my local comic book store.

I was starting to become disillusioned with the whole industry because of low quality, the dismantling of classic heroes and titles and lots of other factors. No longer collecting comics as I had nearly my entire life didn't help to inspire the need to draw and create things like it once did.

I thought I was growing up and becoming realistic, but in reality I was just getting old.

So what broke me out of such a fatalistic mindset after about twenty years? Once again it was comic book related!

The rise of the Indie Comic Book crowd funding scene through people like Vox Day, what was once Comicsgate and the anti-comicsgate people like Doug Tennapel, Mike Miller etc have inspired me to buy books and have restored in me the itch to draw again.

Reading and enjoying comics while watching great artists like Doug live stream himself creating his books in real time, by drawing and inking comic pages, has awakened the dream in me again.

So in a nerdy version of a mid-life crisis I have decided, for better or for worse, to try and learn to draw again after literally not drawing after about twenty years.

I finally went to my parents house to pick up my two art desks that I had abandoned and neglected there since I had got married. I brought them home and put them into my "gaming room" and converted that room into a drawing study/nerd cave and made the promise to myself to draw everyday and to not get disillusioned and give up this time.
 

                                     

The truth is that I am too old now to probably get good at this stage in my life at drawing but that's fine. I am really enjoying myself and feel I have picked up a healthy hobby again in my life for the first time in many years. No matter what happens, I am having fun.


I have found that as I have begun drawing again it has improved many other aspects in my life that I wont go into detail right now and bore you with, but I have generally started to slowly become more optimistic and hopeful in life. My art has improved quicker in this short time since I have started drawing again than I expected it to do I must admit.

If you're interested at all in my journey I plan to post my thoughts, bad art and progress here on this blog and I invite you to favorite the blog link, stop by MY TWITTER and let me know what you think. All constructive criticism will be welcome.

Already I have drawn a cover for my kindle book: Moloch: A Fairy Tale which as also made me have to relearn PhotoShop again at the same time, after about the same absence as quitting drawing, to color and add it to the book that is already up on Amazon. I have also been drawing, doodling and using "how to draw" books every day.

I have even started drawing on my own comic book that I hope to share with everyone on this very blog in the near future so stay tuned-

But none of that is why I wrote this article. I have written this just in case there is some young person out there on the internet reading this that might be going through that same time of life as I did when I decided to give up my hobbies and dreams and "grow up" and quit drawing and beg them to not do so.

Don't give up. No matter how tired or busy you are, don't give up. No matter how frustrated you are with your skill level or improvement, don't give up.

As I sit here in life, almost 45 years old, I look back at the 20 or so years I quit drawing and know that I can never get them back. I also know that even if I stick to my dreams now, and keep drawing for the next 20 years, by the time I get to where I should have been by now if I hadn't quit- I will be nearly 65 years old and nearer to the end of my life than anything else.

Don't give up. Don't be too tired and don't think growing up and being responsible means giving up on your dreams and your healthy habits.

Anyway, that's enough for now, I got to go and do some drawing!!