Paper is the sort of thing that I can get buried in. I hunch so close to the paper I can smell the unmistakable sent of stale bleach. I can spend hours sitting silently over my pencil as I quietly press shadows onto the page. As I watch a scene appear, I hardly think about how it got there. I just see how I want it to be and sketch that into the white spaces of my canvas.

Sketching fills my busy mind so that my diaphragm slows rhythmically to a steady beat and every muscle is concentrated on the image that I’m creating. It takes all my thought away and suddenly I’m surrounded by peacefulness. I lose myself in my picture and can’t think of anything else. Then, when I think I’ve finally finished and step back, I can always improve my work and add more highlights and shadows and tweak the shapes. Methodically, I work until I see what I have in mind.

Art has always been something that I enjoy. My hands fill with a certain itch and I have to use them to make some new creation. Drawing is easy to focus on; I don’t have a prompt or script from which I must create. Even if I do have some sort of assignment, I don’t get distracted from my art as I do when I get ready in the morning, when I’m doing my homework, and when I’m following the exact same schedule every day. Art offers something new and as I keep working, I become deliberately buried in a flurry of various shades of white and graphite.