Fragments of Tales.

The Artists Struggle

I watch my hand move, flicking upward and curving down. It's passive, like I'm in the stands of a baseball game, or watching a movie. How queer when you really think about it, to be a spectator to your actions, a passenger in your own body.

The pencil stops, and I exhale through my nose. With a quick twirl of the pencil, I'm now frantically rubbing it out with the stub of an eraser. I blow the hairs of rubber away, before wiping the stubborn few of my page and table.

Unable to wipe the smudge off, I crumple the paper with a growl and deftly launch it into the air. It lands just short, bouncing off the rim of the basket and landing on the floor beside others just like it.

I peel another empty page from the stack. Fresh page and a fresh start. Hopefully with a better ending...

The lead tip hovers inches away, ready to strike. There's a lot of power in a page and a pencil y'know. I could draw a menagerie of animals, a circus of clowns, a city of buildings. Yet for some reason I'm trapped drawing turned away faces. Over and over and over again.

Focus idiot! I clasp the handle of my mug, and knock back the weak tea. I glance up at my bright laptop, at the girl on my screen. I've seen her so many times I no longer see her. The coy grin, the dimpled face, the pink hair, the slender fingers pushing a rogue strand of hair behind her ear. They're all lost on me now, evoking no emotion as I break her down to what she is. A drawing, just a collection of precise strokes.

I glance at her deep blue eyes one last time, before I'm back to tap tap taping away at the page. A lead trail dances on the page, and for a moment the steps are just right, the twirl tight enough, the leap and land perfect. It goes as quick as it comes though, and it's only a matter of time before my dancer fumbles and falls. My pencil skids across the page. I erase with a vengeance.

Again and again I go through the motions. Back on its feet, my dancer flies through the air, arcing and bending and pirouetting. Yet they're meaningless, no matter how long it dances, it's only a matter of time before something goes wrong. The cheeks too straight, the hair too wavy, the lips an unholy mess. Don't even get me started on the hands.

I look up at the girl once more, and I examine her again with a sigh. She's beautiful, and the more I study her the more I appreciate the craftsmanship. I couldn't fault it if I tried, every line imbued with an easy grace. Everything just right, but it looks so simple it might as well have been a thirty second sketch.

Don't get me wrong, I know for a fact it isn't. I know JennyDraws224 didn't draw her in thirty seconds , I know that the digital drawing was drawn and redrawn for hours. I know she was work. But it looks perfect, so very perfect in fact that it makes it look easy. Funny how some things, the better they are, the easier people assume it is to create. What am I but a tourist, in a shirt far too tight, craning my head at the Sistine chapel and remarking "I could do that if I wanted." Before scoffing down a hotdog drenched in too much mustard.

And I know what you want to say. "ooo but John you're forgetting that they've worked at their trade for hours, days, years."

I know that. Of course I do. Jennie's probably been at it since she could hold a pencil. Still though, I look at the girl's easy smile, her care-free demeanor and her perfect structure (Strange complement I know) and I look down at my own drawings. My butchery of parts, hands and feet, eyes and arms. In comparison my stuffs crap. Every piece I sweated, bled and slaved over. And what does it amount to? Just a huge heap of stinking crap.

A dull pain aches behind my eyes, and I rub them in small circles with my hands before pinching the bridge of my nose. I take a deep breath, and I reach for another swig of my tea. Much to my dismay, it's empty. Joy, another disappointment.

I just stay like that for a bit, listening to the soft background music. It's pleasant, soothing my agitated self. When I have the heart, I look back at my work and the emptiness still left on the page. I stay like that for a bit too, bargaining with myself. A voice within me nags, telling me I'm not even close to being finished for the day, that I gotta hit my quota for the day if I want to be a great artist. However it's quiet, and just continues to get softer and softer as I feel my eyelids grow heavy, and my growing headache pulsate. Another voice tells me that tomorrows a new day, and that I've done enough.

It doesn't take long till I'm in bed. I can hear my computer cradle itself to sleep, as I tunnel under my thick blankets, rest my head on a cool pillow and my world goes black. Tomorrow's a new day.