Column: Comfort, an aspiring artist’s reflection

This drawing helped me grow as an artist/person allowing me to better understand myself. As an artist, I learned how I can portray the physical comfort and what I feel mentally all at once in my pieces. The main idea this piece holds is comfort. I have a fear of death, and I go through derealisation/panic that I am actually alive in this universe.

Though I would like to express my fear, I wanted to focus more on what puts my fears at ease. This piece helped me understand the most important factors that comfort me in life and why. One of the most important factors is family. My family gives me motivation and encourages me in everything. I know how much effort they put in to make me happier and make my life better.

With this in mind, I feel very lucky and want to enjoy every second of my life. I worry a lot about what will happen in the future but working on this piece helped me understand that I should not think so much about something that is unavoidable. Creating this piece reminded me that instead of enjoying my life, I am taking out my precious time fretting over inevitable death. 

When I was younger, I learned a valuable lesson. I did not know what it is like to love or care for someone when I was younger. I was overjoyed to have a younger sibling, but I had not learned to appreciate having a little sister let alone feel fortunate to have one.

As a child, conflicts between my sister and I influenced how I viewed the importance of her and my family as a whole. I was often annoyed by her over the smallest things. One day I was so angry I took my anger out on her physically. I grabbed her by the arms and swung her around.

She ended up with a bloody nose and the blood would not stop flowing. I immediately regretted my actions and prayed I did not hurt her badly. My mom and I took her to urgent care right away. I was so terrified in the car, I could not stop crying and praying. At that moment, I realized how awful of a sister I was and how much I genuinely cared for her.

I was so relieved when the doctor told us that the bloody nose was probably a coincidence when I swung her and that she is completely fine. My poor actions caused me to learn how dependent I am on my family. Now I am very close with my sister and we share the best moments of life together.

I wanted to illustrate myself hugging someone important. The piece shows the front of my face and the back of my sister. I want to express a tranquil mood. I incorporated an interesting texture to the drawing, making it a bit surreal. The background texture/design is inspired by Donray. The goal of the texture is to capture the soothing feeling I get from my sister. I wanted it to show that family plays an important role in relieving my anxiety.

I want to portray my uncertain internal world and I chose a surreal approach to express this. The piece exemplifies my use of surreal design/texture and color choice in the background. The figures represent my external world and calm/comfort. Since I focus on comfort, I thought about the physical aspects. For example, the life figures are purposefully wearing loose clothing to embody the idea of comfort. My style in my pieces always holds a different balance of looseness and realism — in this piece leaning more realistic for the figures.