Dear Reader,

A few weeks ago I happened to bump into my cousin’s daughter and her words stayed to haunt my mind:

At the end of November I was sitting in one absolutely beautiful Café in eastern Helsinki (Yesterday Café, can’t but recommend) , overseeing my exhibition that was going on when my cousin’s family delighted me with a visit. My cousin’s daughter is a lower secondary teenager, maybe fourteen. And while her mother admired my paintings, my young friend uttered, with downcast eyes:

“I can’t draw.”

I opened my mouth to inform her  that I couldn’t either. I closed it and looked around.  My gaze slid over the walls, stopping at one of my all time favourite paintings that a friend had recently described: “ That could be a frame from the Arcane.” (Arcane is a visually stunning animation series. I greatly admire the style.)

I made the decision to keep my lips sealed and instead concentrated my efforts on selling my cousin one of the paintings and a neat pile of Christmas cards. I saw my family members out the Café door.

“I can’t draw,” kept ringing loudly in my ears, drowning the chill background music.

Enlightenment strikes

On the following Sunday I got a boxing glove into my face. More than once. On top of it,  I was jumping around trying to escape the reach of my practice partners, unsure of what I was really supposed to do with them, other than kick them further back those few times they came in reach and offered any kind of opening I could grasp. Those times were few indeed and my performance less than elegant.

After the combat practice, I was beaten. Mostly in spirit. For a while I simply sat on the dressing room bench gathering my strengths. I wasn’t sure I would be able to lift my gym bag onto my back, possibly ever again. The shin guards and boxing gloves had clearly grown heavier during the session.

I can’t spar.

I am terrible at the combat part of  my chosen martial arts. I had succeeded in eschewing my problem until the threshold to come to a combat lesson was lowered so close to grass-root-level that I simply ran out of excuses. And I had a lot of excuses.

Mostly I have feared that I wouldn’t have been good enough to come. That people would have laughed at me because I am slow and learning. Or even worse: what if I were in the way of others? Especially in the way of my friends who would have been forced to partner with me for the practice out of pity.

I am just not good. Even worse, from my perspective my friends are martial arts demigods. (And it's not even just  one type of martial arts.)

Similarities in an almost Forgotten Corner of my Memory

However, there is one clear consensus between my friends: They don’t aim at competing. They have already experienced the competitions they ever wanted to. The idea of a showy medal has long ago lost its shine for them, and they are actually always happy to take me in and adapt their training to my lower level. They even claim that I am getting better, though I suspect this is just a compliment for compliment’s sake.

But let's take a quick detour back to the skill of drawing and what it means when a lower secondary student says that they can’t do it.

For I can all too easily imagine myself back to the narrow corridoors of the establishment were I was forced to undergo a torture method called lower secondary.  I remember that the drawings the art teacher liked were hung on walls, and that mine were rarely seen there. I remember a downstairs corridor, where the artistic students had painted murals on the tile wall. (I especially liked one beautiful centaur.)  I remember my yearly diploma where the average grade was consistently dragged down by the mandatory arts course. I remember my desperate efforts to add contrast to a drawing where there apparently was too little  of it, at least that was what the teacher thought.

Especially well I recall all the artworks I finished at home late in the evenings because I was too slow to complete the tasks during school time.

I also remember my friends who could draw. On school books, during art lessons. In the best of cases, on fancy drawing pads.

In this constant comparing I was simply without talent. Maybe a sentiment that is now shared by my cousin’s daughter.

Fortunately, I don’t need to be Good at Drawing

If feeling you were good at drawing was a requirement for doing art, I wouldn’t have made a single art work. Ever. To this day. 

Fortunately, during the tender years of my developing skills my creativity flowed through very safe channels. My skill at drawing or my understanding of composition rules never became an issue. For, none of my family members ever complained about the home made Christmas cards. I never received any critique when I came to a housewarming with a self painted greeting card. Not a single one of my birthday poems was graded on a scale from four to ten.

Important has been the time used  and the message. Not the straightness of my glitter lines or the brilliance in contrast or how well I have applied the golden ratio.

It has never mattered if someone else made a flashier card.

Like in the painting that my cousin bought important was the goddess concept. There are many artists who paint smoother lines, prettier faces and shinier crowns. But my cousin found something of herself in the painting. It was good enough to serve as a mirror. I had managed to communicate something important to her, despite the fact that the Maiden’s arm remains slightly warped. 

Actually, to this day I don’t consider myself especially good at drawing. I can create pictures out of colours, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it drawing. When I know that the image I want to create includes something I consider difficult, I “cheat” a little: I create a 3D model, use reference or rely on  image libraries. For, my intention is not to create the best drawing, but to make something meaningful. I had used 3D reference dolls to lay out the composition in my cousin’s painting because humans are hard to draw. Especially when there are more than one.

( The Goddess: Sketch and middle steps: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/n0zZwe )

Back on the Dojo

So, I returned to the same practice next Sunday.

I might still not be skilled at sparring. But my interest in learning is genuine. It is always an intensive experience to practice in pairs and right now I feel I get some deep insights about life when I am wearing boxing gloves. I think sparring is interesting. And I try hard to be the most interesting person I know. This aspiration naturally guides me into doing stuff I find interesting. 

On top of this, the Sunday practices are open to anyone interested. There are many practices and lessons where there are strict requirements, the colour of your belt might tip the scale in many cases. But this Sunday practice is open for all.

So it is of no consequence that I can’t. Or that I am worse than others. It doesn’t really matter when the question is “are you interested?”

That is why I come to these practices. Because the answer is yes, yes I am interested.

In one corner of the gym there is a pile of light pillows that are used in receiving kicks and punches. Every now and then I glimpse at them when the teacher cries “faster, faster” and my legs became filled with lead already some twenty minutes ago.

On them is written in japanese: “Seven times down. Eight times up.”

I want to think that they are there to whisper silently that it is fine to feel you are bad at what you are doing, if you just return next Sunday.

In Helsinki, Monday, 09/12/2024

Jenna Arjas

Post Scriptum,

Here is the best piece of advice I have ever received regarding drawing: I was going to an entrance exam and a family friend said to me: “Don’t look at other papers. Just go blindly past.” There was a lot of drawing in that exam. I never looked at any other papers but my own. I got in.

( Was it a good thing that I got in, is up to debate. You can read some of that story here: https://www.omalainen.com/post/silver-lined-memory-of-studies )