Inking and Thinking

Recently, I have discovered a new skill that has been locked away my whole life, and now I am able to build on it and expand my inner peace- all because of a rainy day!

My family had left the house for a good part of the day- my parents at work and my sister out with friends swimming at the beach, so my labradoodle dog and I were alone for a long while. Whole house to ourselves, no need to do anything or be anywhere, and simply enjoy the tranquility.

Mind you, silence and lack of humans are some of my favorite things to begin with, but that particular day, I was feeling highly anxious and stressed for no apparent reason. So when they left, I was clearly aware that I was going to have a boring, stressful, and completely useless afternoon.

To add to all the things going against my favor, it was a soggy, rainy, gray day that made the atmosphere feel tight and heavy with mood, and I wasn't in the mindset to enjoy the wet gift nature had given us.

Turns out though, my afternoon ended up being peaceful, calming, content, and relaxed, and here's how: I was texting my cousin about my art (I was working on penciled realism), and they brilliantly suggested that I try to do these drawings with ink instead of pencils. I had the time, and a few ballpoint pens hanging around the house, so I got to work.

What was the harm in trying?

Since I'm a huge Marvel fan (keep in mind that I'm 14:)), I chose to draw Tom Hiddleston as Loki to experiment with this new style (afterall, he is the god of mischief and transformation), and it was a bit frustrating at the start trying to capture his features with a light pencil sketch, but as soon as I started with the ballpoint pen, I knew I was in for a treat. I became so happy while doing this that I actually started playing meditation music, and I just let the peaceful energy flow through me and washed away all of my stress and upset- it disappeared so fast I soon forgot that I had been anxious in the first place!

I spent five hours on this piece, which I realized when I was finished, but I hadn't even noticed because the experience was so positive for me. I had closed the windows, turned off most of the lights, heard the pounding rain outside, and listened to the gentle scratching of my pen on the paper. It demanded tons of patience, but since I had calmed down to such an amazing level, I didn't even notice how painstaking it was to colour in a full page drawing with the tip of a ballpoint pen.

Admittedly, the results were way better than any of my other attempts at realism (I have a more cartoony original style).

After that, I was encouraged (by myself and others) to do another drawing because of my earlier success. The next day, I started working on Scarlett Johanson as Black Widow, which I did the same way as I did my first drawing: in a relaxed, happy state of calm that I made in one big rush of creativity without stopping. My faithful pen ran out of ink halfway through drawing her, but I had plenty of pens still left over that I could use.

Again, I found this drawing even better than the Loki one, so I kept going on my wild rampage of creativity.

Next, I drew Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie while I was at my cottage, which, if you read my story “The Small Miracles of Life”, you will see that the place itself is quite therapeutic as well. It took less time than the others, but I am still relatively pleased with the results.

However, I’m not too concerned about how the drawing turned out, and have found that I’m more invested in the process itself. I am one of those people who truly love and value patience, so I found that this style of art gives me a great deal of satisfaction through the making of it.

As an aside, I also did a drawing of Cate Blachett as Hela, though I never finished it because I got distracted by other things (she is handless, unfortunately, due to my attention span of that day).

In conclusion to this little experience I decided to share with you, I just want to say that rainy days may not be fun within themselves (or maybe you do find them exciting, who knows), but they don’t only let the flowers grow and bloom- you creativity too can be watered on a day of monotonous grey!

Thank you for reading, and I wish you a great day!

-Olivia Gyuran

(Please note that the images I've chosen to show here have been edited (to a very small degree) to make it look more black than red (my phone does not take great pictures).