Self-Introduction: A Journey to Self-Healing

I: Therapy with Watercolor

Medium: Sakura Koi Water Colors

Medium: Holbein Artists’ Water Color

2018 marks the 15th year since I was first diagnosed with depression. Now that I’m approaching my thirties, I’ve calmed down a lot, although I am still aware of the monster still lurking in the dark, waiting to take me under whenever I crumbled. Throughout the years, I have acknowledged its existence and have made a pact with it, but a monster is a monster, and whatever that feeds it is the same thing that drags me down into a timeless hellish spiral.

I’ve figured out that the things that had been feeding this monster were major events that happened in my life that were related to social events. Ironically, I know I can have the thing I’ve been craving since I was born from these events. I hate social settings as much as I crave creating meaningful bonds with people. It is easier to withdraw from the physical world and the people around me, especially after I’ve graduated from university and stopped working. I can just retreat into my shell whenever I want to, but it is different in the digital world.

I am scared of social media. It somehow has a massive pulling energy like a supermassive black hole. If we accidentally got vacuumed into it, all the planes and dimensions will become one, and so will I and the monster inside me. And it is so scary how I can easily be pulled towards the event horizon, and then be sucked into the black hole.

Ever since I deleted my accounts (with real acquaintances) on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, destroying the remnants of my past in the form of clutters, I have felt so much better. But I am aware that I am somehow just a runaway who will keep on running away. I admit that at first, the sole reason why I joined Steemit was because of my fiancé. But now it is already 2018. I need to do something with my life or I’m sure I’ll create another regret in a mountain of regrets that will eventually destroy me. Sure, I’ll probably regret this too but I’ll make sure my connection with Steemit will be a positive regret, a regret that instead of destroying me, will develop me in a positive way.

Recently, I’ve become attracted to try out new things such as sewing and watercolor painting. To commemorate this decision, I’ve purchased a few tools I think are necessary to perhaps produce more fulfilling results.

The Tools

Holbein Artists’ Water Color (18)
Sakura Koi Water Colors (24)
Holbein Water Brush (Round-M)
Sakura Koi Water Brush (S/M/L)
Kuretake BIMOJI Fudepen (Fine)
Fluid 4 x 6 inches Cold Press Water Color Paper
Faber-Castell 9000 (H) – For sketching (not in the picture).

The Process

(1)The flower art was my first attempt to try to imitate a more feminine water color art that I see is trending on the net right now. Reference picture is credit to Freepik (through Google Image). However, I found the subject (flowers) to be eye-wateringly boring so I thought, “F*** it, I’ll just do the usual emo stuff I usually do that are meaningful to me and drop the pretty flowers that have no significance to me whatsoever. So I started sketching the visuals I had in mind. Reference picture for the internal organs

(11)I drew the detailing using Kuretake Fudepen, but I think it was not a really good idea. Using a normal watercolor brush with only a little amount of color perhaps would do a better job.

Watercolor: A Therapeutic Healing Tool

This is not my first time using watercolor. When I first started using it about 8 or 9 years ago for my interdisciplinary Watercolor Painting class, it struck me as a troublesome tool even though the outcome were usually very beautiful. I only attended the class several times the entire semester. It was a pity because the class actually provided ample opportunities for me to learn the skill using the right methods.

But since the only Graphic Design students in the class were me and my fiancé and the rest of the class were all Fine Arts students, we didn’t manage to learn those valuable first-hand watercolor tricks as we were so bad at socializing and initiating any conversation with the other students who were clearly more trained and talented in watercolor painting.

But I did learn a lot nevertheless, even though I could barely remember most of the lessons. It probably just didn’t have much of an impact on me during that time. I find the concept of drawing images based primarily on what you see (in this case, still-life and nature scenes) and how you interpret the impressions left by the subject through the canvas quite boring to me. Yes, it could be poignant and nostalgic and beautiful, and you could always derive meaning from it, and from everything, for that matter. But perhaps it simply isn’t really my cup of tea.

The one trick my lecturer taught me about watercolor that I remember until now, because I saw a beautiful wisdom in it was: “Trust the water to guide the color, not the other way around.” I was in awe because that thought never crossed my mind before. It is such a beautiful wisdom. However after the class was over, all the thoughts about watercolor disappeared from my mind. I’d rather use Photoshop all day to paint as I could find any tool in a single computer program until the day my fuse was cut short, the monster ran amok and I stopped drawing for quite some time.

Now I’m picking up watercolor again as the paths crossed, as I see again the beautiful wisdom of the path of water that I could apply in my life. Perhaps through this way I could learn to truly control my mind and slowly heal all the wounds. I learnt the hard way that it might take much more time for me compared to other people to create meaningful and lasting bonds with others with the way I communicate right now.

Watercolor is messy and hard to control, and sometimes the flow is unpredictable, at least to me. And yet, it is truly profound in its own way when used with the right methods and the right idea. It could be one of the finest medium to communicate through visuals when life doesn’t grant one the ability to communicate in groups. Like this life, though I keep on grudgingly ranting over the endless list of my shortcomings, I already have the meaningful and lasting bonds I was looking for, and I know I am progressing towards the path with light at the end of the tunnel as long as I pay attention to the track I’m walking on. Even if at the end of the day the light might turn out to be just a mirage, it is fine as there will be another light somewhere. I know at least I will always have a glint of light hidden somewhere from inside myself.

Until next time. Thank you for reading (or looking).