Topic: emotion!

I was feeling kind of down yesterday after learning that my friend was sick and couldn’t hang out. Even though I was ecstatically happy only a few hours earlier, I found myself just laying on my bed, groggily staring at the wall. Even though my external circumstances are basically perfect, I still somehow wound up in a bad mood.

One thing that usually makes me feel better is taking photos of beautiful things around me – especially macro shots. I’ll never get tired of looking at the toys on my window sill. They are the most beautiful objects in the world. So, I picked up my camera (which magically fixed itself, hooray!) and started snapping some pictures.

Photography is a great way to feel better because it allows you to create something beautiful without a whole lot of effort, while simultaneously appreciating what’s around you.

Do you ever wonder why things tend to look more beautiful in photos than they do in reality? I think it’s just because there’s a frame around them. The fact that somebody took a photo of this thing means that there was something that caught their eye about it, and it causes you to look and wonder what it was. Taking photos or looking at photography puts you in the frame of mind of looking for beauty and purpose.

Sure, this exercise is easy if you already have a lot of beautiful things, but this is more an exercise in looking. Even a pile of dust can look beautiful if you look at it in the right way. Imagine that every speck of dust is there for a reason, arranged expertly by an artist. What kind of look or mood were they going for? Where did all of the atoms come from? In fact, a good challenge might be to make the most dull or ugly seeming objects look beautiful through photography.

If you took a photo of a pile of garbage, someone looking at it would probably wonder the same things. As soon as you ask “Why is this beautiful?” your brain will start to conjure up the answers. It might take a bit of practice to get rolling.

Likewise, your attitude can cause a beautiful object to look dull, boring, or ugly. It’s all in how you choose to perceive things.

By the end of my photo taking session, I had managed to raise my emotional level from disappointment to somewhere around boredom/contentment. After that, I still didn’t feel like doing much so I made some popcorn and watched a movie with my dad. Even though I wasn’t bouncing around with joy, it was still a marked improvement from laying on my bed feeling sorry for myself for no reason.

It started with a deliberate choice to feel better, and then giving myself permission to do whatever I wanted in order to get there. I’m going to keep discovering and practicing ways to work up the emotional scale.

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Posted on May 20th, 2011
Filed under: Creating, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Living (All Posts)
Topics: emotion, photography

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Took these after getting home from my vaccination appointment Thursday night! I got two in one arm, one in the other, and a take-home oral vaccine to take before I leave. I am now VIRUS-PROOF. Isn’t technology amazing?

I learned something Thursday: An effective way for me to dissipate anxiety is to draw a picture of a character being calm.

Normally, I’m fine with vaccinations, and I don’t have any resistance to getting them – I know it’s something that needs to be done, and I know that it doesn’t even hurt much and it’s over pretty fast, so I don’t fight it. However, having that in combination with some other things (uncertainty about whether I was going to be able to make my appointment because of the road conditions, going out to a new area of town for the first time), I was feeling pretty stressed out.

I tried telling myself to just relax and breathe, I tried reminding myself that even though I feel anxious about these types of things all the time nothing bad ever actually happens, I tried thinking of other unrelated things that would make me feel good, I tried visualizing myself going through the process of finding my way there and getting shots in a serene and unshakeable manner, but nothing really seemed to help. Then, I tried drawing a picture of myself being calm and I instantly calmed down.

Two theories on why this worked:

1. The fact that I was focused on an activity made me not think about the thing I was nervous about. Simple.
2. In order to draw a picture of someone displaying a certain emotion, I have to empathize with the character and imagine how they feel and from that I can determine what position I should draw the character in.

In this respect, being an effective illustrator is kind of like being an effective actor. I need to figure out what I would feel in order to figure out what I would do in terms of physical emotional tells, and I need to figure out what I would do in order to figure out what I should draw.

Back when I was younger (age 11-15?) it was more obvious that I empathized with the characters I was drawing. For example, if I was drawing someone with their tongue sticking out, after a few minutes I would realize that I was actually sticking my own tongue out. :P Now, I don’t even think about it, but I must still do this.  Actually, I don’t think that it mattered that I was the subject of the drawing, it probably could have been any other subject and it would have been just as effective in calming me down. Maybe this is why people tell me that I’m great at drawing expressions in characters – the fact that I do this subconsciously.

Posted on November 27th, 2010
Filed under: Being Healthy, Creating, Exploring, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Learning, Living (All Posts)
Topics: calm, drawing, emotion, travel

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