DRAWING | How does Siddhartha Gautama laugh?

Recently, since the beginning of 2017, after many years of abstinence due to demotivation, I played with the drawing again. Especially drawing of human figure and characters. Which has always fascinated me as an amateur of comics and otaku since adolescence.

Thing I began to do deliberately in the manner of Art Therapy and Psycomagic, as I said in the previous post about my recent personal history, to leave a few months of depression. Process in which I reviewed my priorities in life, how to use underutilized and abandoned skills, as well as the decision to look for forms of expression on the Internet that were economically sustainable. What, after considering the possibility of starting a Youtube Channel and other more mechanical and infamous options, finally brought me to start at Steemit.

Among the drawings that I have been doing, such as metaphorical comic characters, face drawings and meme-like compositions, I bring you this first freehand pencil drawing experiment that really moved me. With the collaboration of my friend of High School and integral artist Manuela Márquez, who immediately understood the meaning of the image. Using Adobe Photoshop and her talent for painting, she has visually and conceptually enhanced the original sketch in a wonderful way. When she asked me "How would you like the drawing to be colored?" My answer was "faceted, in the Fauvist way", using a very precise term for the painters and studiers of the eurocentric history of the visual arts. And her response was this effective visual result, as well as a symbolic detail that I will ask to you who that’s reading me, at the end of the text.

José Guaglianone y Manuela Márquez: Buddha laughs as a carajito, 2017-2018. Pencil and digital coloring.

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The image of the spiritual master of the north of India, as a symbol, liberated by the magic of the drawing of all formality and solemnity. Added to the exaltation of the original innocence of childhood (in Venezuela and other Latin-Caribbean countries we say in a colloquial way carajitas and carajitos to the girls and boys, the children, the childhood) prior to the indoctrinations of the family, the traumas and the Society, as a potential emancipator in these times of crisis, helped me raise my spirits and responsibility towards my own future. The joy that caused me to see how I managed to draw a face with such a realistic and spontaneous facial expression, as well as the need to add attributes and make it a Buddha, helped me to rediscover myself and a spiritual teaching for the journey: the serenity of Buddha and the vitality of the inner child, in balance.