A couple of weekends ago I tried drawing for the first time in years and got a bit of a surprise.

Of course, I was rusty – the pen felt as awkward in hand as my doodles looked on paper – and it wasn’t long before I was tempted to quit. Too curious to do so easily, though, I tried a trick my father taught me when I was a kid, instead.

With my eyes closed, I drew a simple scribble, and checked it from all angles for any likenesses or associations it might evoke. Once I’d decided what it looked like to me, I then used some of its lines, and added to them, to make the ‘scribble’ into an easily recognizable ‘sketch’ of that thing.

Then, I scribble, check, sketched until I was racing like I used to as a child.

Still, the pen felt awkward enough that I, eventually, ground to a halt and found myself simply staring at it.

Had I lost what little ability I might have had…(?) I wondered, but knowing that thinking… or more aptly ‘over-thinking’… had caused me to give drawing up in the first place, I hit the break on that mental train before it could build up a good head of steam.

‘Steam… train… mechanics… ‘basic mechanics’…!’ I spun, flipped, and fiddled the pen between fingers… one after the other… feeling for what I couldn’t see. Then, something in me ‘clicked’, I froze, and keeping hand and pen in exactly that position, I tried another scribble.

As different as it was from my usual grip, and despite conflicting information from mind and body, things finally felt ‘right’, and I ripped through another half dozen scribble-sketches to give myself time to get comfortable with it. Rather than encouraging me, however, my drawings only seemed to cause a growing unease.

I drew one last scribble… a rough circle… cleared my head and, on a whim, let my hand do its thing.

Its first few strokes were short… hesitant.. and only made a mess. But, I stayed out of it and my oblivious hand picked up strength and speed until it was laying lines down haphazardly. A nose appeared… an eye… the strange creeping feeling grew stronger… and then I was looking at the head and shoulders of a masculine looking creature much like the orks in fantasy movies.

drawing of an ‘ork’

Decent, I thought, but it felt like I was looking at something a stranger had drawn, and that’s when it finally hit me…

Of course, it’d look like a stranger had drawn it because I wasn’t the same person I’d been 25 years ago when I last seriously tried to draw. Too much life… too much change… and, even as I thought that, an excited curiosity grew within me.

What would I see if I kept drawing? How would all that change affect my art? What could I learn about myself?

Unfortunately, I got interrupted and had to set my drawing aside, but I feel like this is something I need to pursue if for no other reason than to satisfy the curiosity that’s been gnawing at me all these years.