Analogy

I am soooo very high right now 🙃. That was some serious anxiety wtf. Feel good now haha and I thought about something that made my brain sparkle so I came here to write it in case I forget after I sober up. 🧠 ✨

I thought more about what it’s like to draw someone as the artist. If I draw a person’s portrait and they are sitting for me, I look right at them. As if I was making direct unflinching eye contact and even if I am, I’m not looking at them. Particularly if I’m doing a more realistic (and not expressive) portrait, I’m looking at the curves of their face, the shape of their eye, the small glossy chamfered piece of flesh that gently contours the eyeball collecting moisture, it seamlessly wraps downward to the bottom part of your eyelid where the lashes sit snugly in a scattered line. Or maybe the color of the subtle shadow cast by the top lid back onto the sclera, or the arc of your brow bone, etc. I could go on. People have told me they like it, being drawn by me, and I always wondered why. I wonder if they feel seen? It is quite the intimate process, though as an artist I’m purely focused on my craft.  

In the same way, I imagine a therapist looks at their client, identifying the shapes of their personality (or personalities). Examining how they’re put together, how their mind works, which parts are prominent, which pieces are in shadow. A sketch is easy enough to render of most folks. But to truly capture an authentic portrait of the whole person, it takes skill and experience. 

A skilled artist will know to pay attention to the dark areas, not just the bright obvious areas. Focusing on shadow, and contrast, paying attention to it, builds a much better picture, adds dimension to the overall form. In art, shadow has depth, texture, and color (you use true black sparingly because pure matte darkness rarely exists in nature). The practitioner looks closely from far away and up close, building a model of what they see in front of them, a portrait. If they’re experienced, likely the person in front of them eventually feels very seen, for better or worse.  

Interesting.🤔

***

Oh. I get it. I fell asleep for a second, but woke up when I realized haha.. it’s probably frustrating when I clam up in sessions. I can feel my T’s light frustration, trying to find a way in… it makes me sad I can’t be more talkative, more normal, so he doesn’t feel like he has to fill the whole session himself. lol

I want to, I really do want to open up. It’s just, often, especially in person it takes me a while to climb over the wall I’ve built up and it’s painful because of perceived threats that don’t exist lol. I start at the bottom of this massive cliff, the climb is difficult, and I’m not a great climber, I’m slow and methodical, so in an hour I don’t always make it over the wall (depends on my energy level). But I’ll take a break in the side of a cliff, maybe there’s a small alcove. And the next time we talk I might make it over the top and you can actually see me, so I can have a proper face to face conversation.

As I said in a previous post, “this is the way my brain is broken”. I know this about myself, which is why I continue to push myself out of my comfort zone. I’ve lived enough to know once I make it to the other side of something difficult, I do just fine, and excel even (that’s not ego, it’s fact, there’s evidence – I have to remind myself of that, so I can’t talk myself out of it).

But I get it. Its like someone is paying me to work on an 80+ hr portrait of them, and they show up and I’m all ready and they come in without bearing an inch of skin…totally covered up in a thick coat, pants, a ski mask and sunglasses, when the previous session they were much more exposed and comfortable. Haha Oh and they refuse to take off their ski mask no matter what I say…I see that could feel like a wasting everyone’s time. Lol 😆 That’s essentially what I did today lolol. My bad…

Thinking about this from the other side is enlightening and funny. Anyway, I’ll talk more next time, just know…light that fire and you can’t get me to shut up… this blog is case and point lol.

I’ll do better next time. Maybe I should show up high? 😵‍💫

Moth into Flame (Metallica)

“Light it up
Ah, light it up
Another hit erases all the pain
Bulletproof
Ah, tell the truth
You're falling, but you think you're flying high
High again”