Drawing Pictures

As a young boy there were many luxuries of youth that I missed out on. I'm not sure what exactly the reason was, I think it's because I spent almost all of my free time reading. However football, schoolyard brawls and chasing girls (or was it running from?) never really fit into my complicated agenda. And though in some respects I've never really let go of whatever kid in me there really was (I sit here typing, juicebox in hand) I don't really have many regrets about what I did or didn't do in those early years. However, one particular activity that I really wish I had paid even an inkling of attention to has recently come to my attention; putting a pen to the paper and making shapes instead of letters. It's something I never even considered until I showed up at ye olde art school. Even then, I became wrapped up in theater and film (my original intention) and left alone the personal belief that me drawing pictures was simply not possible. These eyes weren't meant to send those little messages to my brain that would shoot off to my hands that would in turn manipulate the pencil to scratch the graphite onto the paper to make an appropriate drawing. Even as a kid. It's just crazy how quickly I abandoned it, given how persistent I can be with things I'm not great at. While I used to watch amazedly as the kid next to me would "free-hand" Ironman in art class, I would scramble to trace cartoons on the light-box to pass time.
Well, after experimenting with most of the art forms at metro arts, its come to my attention that I hadn't even attempted to draw a picture since elementary school. Something about this seemed kinda flawed, considering I'd tried many other more vulnerable things like dancing and singing. But where to start? I decided to start over right back where I should've a decade ago. I drew a funny picture of the teacher giving a lecture. And by the root of the rutabaga it was like I was staring Fernando Teson in the face! His creepy pen sketched outsider art face. So I started drawing other people to see if I could draw a decent non-creepy person. The verdict, aside from a decent Kadence and a scared looking Rachel Kramer, was that I couldn't. I could draw Teson though, pretty consistently. And hella creepy. This brings me to ponder; am I a tortured artist? Clearly I must be, because everything I draw looks like it came straight out of satan's sketchbook, and I don't know why. I don't feel that tortured really. My foot's asleep. Is that a sign of twisted internal conflict? Maybe I should stop drawing before I accidentally resurrect some forgotten god of destruction while sketching my cat. You know what they say about old dogs. Except I'm pretty sure I can learn plenty of new tricks, but maybe I should refrain from the ones that unknowingly channel the will of the damned.