Social media can be fickle. Often times it is wrought with shallow political slander, blasted opinions, cat videos, ‘clever memes’, and lifestyle selfies. This April I delved in a different way to communicate through the post proliferator.
Essentially I wanted to socialize digitally with those on my friends list, but didn’t want to bore others with my meal choices or the repost of some movie trailer in hopes of sparking a conversation through shared interest. I realized that I communicate depth primarily visually, so why not try to attempt some of that depth in the social media scene?
Surprisingly I started working through and conveying feelings I didn’t realize I was having, transforming the experiment into some sort of sketch therapy.
While drawing Snake I found myself reminiscing about my wife and our initial sharing of interests when we first met. We both have connection to video games, a love of philosophically tinged entertainment, and we both share a warrior mentality and vocation. By this point she had been on deployment for about five months, so it also served as a reminder that we both were on a mission that needed to be seen through.
The ‘unknown’ character is me looking quite unsure. This was a little less optimistic day of reflection. I was mulling over all the baggage that I bring to my marriage, while feeling blessed that my wife endures it all. Certain things in the background represented some of the baggage that was weighing on me. Again, I was also missing her quite a bit.
Wolverine is my distant brother’s favorite hero, he has the chest markings tattooed on himself. I was reflecting on his mental disorders and how they have affected him and our relationship over time. I feel the sketch represents positive memories of us together and our shared experience of enduring hardship. We both were drawn to the character because of this. We both strive to always survive through the abuse life can at times dish out. The trick is having the ability to come through as a stronger person because of it.
The Destiny Titan was for a friend’s birthday. That friend happens to work at Bungie. We’ve been creating game projects since we were in seventh grade for fun. I also had been playing quite a bit of Destiny, and love the Titan class, so it was a fine excuse to draw one. This was perhaps my happiest example of projecting more care through social networking sites. Instead of simply typing a variation of ‘happy birthday’ I was able to present something a bit more meaningful.
Finally, by choosing to grab a pencil and my half sized clipboard as my tools in taking up this task, I found that I found some soothing respite from the computer desk. I enjoyed time spent at the coffee shop, or just at my dining room table.
Overall I enjoyed the process. It definitely takes a bit more time than poking a few sentences out of a keyboard that culminating in a crisp click over the post button. I feel the time was worth it, though. Especially since I often I felt the sensation that was in the presences of whomever I was aiming the particular sketch toward, like we were spending displaced time together. These also served as excellent warmups for more serious work later in the day. I certainly would love to do more like this in the future.
RaihnForge 