HOME | DD

Description
Spectral Scream ©2015 Jennifer "怪等" Manning

Normally when I'm in a bad mood I generally just don't draw at all as I usually don't feel like it when I'm that way. Occasionally, however, I will feel like getting that feeling out and down on paper or on a computer screen. Usually I just hide the sketch away once I'm done, because in my experience it was never considered socially acceptable to bring others down with my negativity. I still feel like it's wrong, but clearly bottling everything up isn't working for me either, what with all the anxiety and depression it's causing. So I'm going to take a step in a different direction and show a bit of the hideousness within, starting with this sketch.

The past couple days have been fairly frustrating for me. In spite of the sunny weather that's been going on here, which usually helps with my anxiety and depression, I've actually been feeling more anxious and depressed. At least it's nowhere near as bad as it was last year around this same time, but it is still weighing me down quite a bit. On top of that, my cat has had fleas for about a solid month now and I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle against them. It doesn't seem to matter how much cleaning and vacuuming I do, how much laundry, how many times I bathe the cat, how much flea powder I spread about, they just keep coming! I haven't flea bombed my apartment yet, but frankly that sounds like even more effort than all the cleaning and powder spreading. In fact, you're supposed to still do all that even after the bomb anyway! Just makes me want to tear my hair out and scream at how stupid it all is, especially now that they've begun biting me as well. It's painful, distracting, itchy, infuriating and demoralizing being bit every day no matter what I do to stop it. Also, I already have enough negative thoughts rolling around in my head, so I don't need to look down at my arms and legs, see all the flea bites, and therefore feel like I'm even more of an ugly and disgusting mess than I ever was before in my life.

Okay, rant over! Heh.

At any rate, I just felt compelled to sit down for a couple hours and just get the raw emotions of anger and despair out in some way or another. After about two hours I called it quits as the worst of the feelings were starting to subside. Taking a step back, so to speak, I took a moment to look at what I did and I actually kind of liked how it looked. I thought about continuing to add lots of details to it, like I normally do, but ultimately decided against it. I only added just enough details later when I had calmed down some more to make the hands and face stand out a bit, as it was looking kind of flat still. Other than that, I wanted it to remain as rough and raw as I felt while drawing it. Which is actually something I'd been thinking about doing more often for a while now: not obsessing over details and letting more of the raw emotions play out across the canvas. If nothing else, it would make drawing/painting much more therapeutic rather than a detail-oriented, tedious chore that it often ends up being for me (though I still am always compelled to create anyway, regardless of whether or not I enjoy myself while doing it =/ ).

Description
Spectral Scream ©2015 Jennifer "怪等" Manning

Normally when I'm in a bad mood I generally just don't draw at all as I usually don't feel like it when I'm that way. Occasionally, however, I will feel like getting that feeling out and down on paper or on a computer screen. Usually I just hide the sketch away once I'm done, because in my experience it was never considered socially acceptable to bring others down with my negativity. I still feel like it's wrong, but clearly bottling everything up isn't working for me either, what with all the anxiety and depression it's causing. So I'm going to take a step in a different direction and show a bit of the hideousness within, starting with this sketch.

The past couple days have been fairly frustrating for me. In spite of the sunny weather that's been going on here, which usually helps with my anxiety and depression, I've actually been feeling more anxious and depressed. At least it's nowhere near as bad as it was last year around this same time, but it is still weighing me down quite a bit. On top of that, my cat has had fleas for about a solid month now and I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle against them. It doesn't seem to matter how much cleaning and vacuuming I do, how much laundry, how many times I bathe the cat, how much flea powder I spread about, they just keep coming! I haven't flea bombed my apartment yet, but frankly that sounds like even more effort than all the cleaning and powder spreading. In fact, you're supposed to still do all that even after the bomb anyway! Just makes me want to tear my hair out and scream at how stupid it all is, especially now that they've begun biting me as well. It's painful, distracting, itchy, infuriating and demoralizing being bit every day no matter what I do to stop it. Also, I already have enough negative thoughts rolling around in my head, so I don't need to look down at my arms and legs, see all the flea bites, and therefore feel like I'm even more of an ugly and disgusting mess than I ever was before in my life.

Okay, rant over! Heh.

At any rate, I just felt compelled to sit down for a couple hours and just get the raw emotions of anger and despair out in some way or another. After about two hours I called it quits as the worst of the feelings were starting to subside. Taking a step back, so to speak, I took a moment to look at what I did and I actually kind of liked how it looked. I thought about continuing to add lots of details to it, like I normally do, but ultimately decided against it. I only added just enough details later when I had calmed down some more to make the hands and face stand out a bit, as it was looking kind of flat still. Other than that, I wanted it to remain as rough and raw as I felt while drawing it. Which is actually something I'd been thinking about doing more often for a while now: not obsessing over details and letting more of the raw emotions play out across the canvas. If nothing else, it would make drawing/painting much more therapeutic rather than a detail-oriented, tedious chore that it often ends up being for me (though I still am always compelled to create anyway, regardless of whether or not I enjoy myself while doing it =/ ).