Mistake

All future posts about China will appear on Cute Qubit (cutequbit.blogspot.com). Sorry for the confusion.

CHINA

I have now spent five nights in China, and it feels about time to write my first "Gaven in China" blog post. I've found out that Xanga is right now being blocked in China, but the weird thing is, I also found out that I can post to my blog. I just can't see my blog (so weird!). So I'm just hoping this thing turns out properly, because I have no way of knowing.

Anyway, back to China. Though I'm significantly far from Canada, this place doesn't feel all that foreign. Sure, very few people speak English, but that's the biggest difference. Of course, there's a bunch of little interesting things to say about this place, and that's why I'm writing this post.

My trip here was long; took about 24 hours to get from Toronto to Qingdao (that's including the stop-over in Hong Kong). I had some worries about travelling alone, but it was about as hard to travel by plane alone as it is to travel by bus alone -- not that hard! I sat with a retired doctor on the way down, and we shared some fun conversations.

When I got to Qingdao, I toured the school campus there (the sister campus is in Huandao, where I teach) and noticed that there was a Tsingtao brewing building directly across from the school! Eventually I got back to my place, which turned out not to be half bad (though it's only temporary). Here's a photo of my living room and my balcony.

I also have two bedrooms, but they just look like bedrooms.

Over the next few days, I got to meet the teachers, all of whom are (to my surprise) great people. Canadians dominate in numbers (there's 3 of us), but Aussies and New Zealanders are close behind. Luke (from NZ) has two very cute daughters who attend the school. Unfortunately, being a white kid in China, especially with red hair, makes you a ridiculously huge magnet for attention. I've been out with the kids once, and I already found it to be annoying, though Luke has only lost it once on a crowd who were oogaling his kids.

Oh, here's a pictures I took of the kids.


School, and that whole teaching thing is a story of its own, but much too long to tell. The important thing to know is that so far, I love it! I feel blessed to be able to teach science to little kids (they're in level 7-9, which is equivalent to grade 6-8) since they get so excited about the smallest of things. We were learning about the ear drum, and I had the kids put together "drums" made out of plastic wrap and an empty margarine container (held together by an elastic band). Anyway, I put rice on the drum, and them had a speaker play different frequencies. This makes the rice "dance" quite violently, and when the kids saw this, the "wow's" started coming out. If that's not enough, I get to play with the kids at recess and lunch! I can't express how cool this is! I've always wanted kids, but screw that, I have a whole school of kids to play with!

Anyway, like I said, too long to tell, but I'm sure I'll talk about it more in future posts.

The other fun thing this weekend was that my brother Darryn and his friend Mao Li came down to visit me. You've seen me and likely Darryn before, so here's a photo of Mao Li:


The two of them came late on Friday night, so we really only had time for eating some street meat (so cheap!) and do some street wandering, which was great since I'm still trying to get my directions down here. And since I can't find a map of Huangdao, I've started drawing one, which has proving itself helpful.

On Saturday, we all went down to Golden Sands Beach, and here's my proof.

The last picture of me is in one of the many "rubble zones" that you can find around any urban area of China. It's the physical representation of "out with the old, in with the new," and also the closest I'll ever be to something that looks like a war zone.

We next took a ferry to Qingdao for a little more action. Proof:


An interesting, though not uncommon thing happened to me while I was on the ferry. A man came up to me and asked for me to take a picture for him. This was partly unusual, as the vast majority of people here speak little to no English. I thought he was asking me to take a picture of him and his family, but he wanted me to be in the picture with his family. Then, just one with their two or so year old kid. I put my arm around the kid; they really liked that. But that's just China, you can be a celebrity for just not being Asian. And of course, if people want to take pictures of me with their kids, imagine how hard it is to do anything remotely unusual without a crowd developing. I made up a game with magnets which I was trying to play with Mao Li. Anyway, a larger than comfortable crowd appeared, and I had to put an end to it.

The day in Qingdao was pretty good. We met up with some of Mao Li's friends:

And the English speaking went from 50% to 2% of the time (Darryn and I were the only strong English speakers. Mao Li could only speak a little English, but much more English than I can speak Chinese). The most interesting place we visited was what I called "Love Land." This is where couples (who are already married) come to get their "wedding photo's" taken. It was weird to see so many brides, but kinda cool. Here's a barrage of pictures:

Oh, and here are a bunch of brides on a rock:


Later that night, Darryn, Mao Li, and I went out for dinner. The notable thing was the famous "beer in a bag" that you could buy at a TsingTao restaurant. Seems ridiculous, but it actually worked really well. Here's Darryn posing with his:


We stayed at some hotel for under 100rmb (less than $15CAN). The next day we went to a radio tower (not all that interesting, I have no pictures to prove my time there) but the walk in the adjacent park was quite fun. I found this odd picture which I'm still trying to figure out:


Also, we had to climb some gate, which many Chinese people were doing too (I think it was to avoid some fare, but it was just a shortcut for us), but when we climbed it, out came the crowds. I guess things are more interesting when a foreigner does it.

We all hung out for a little longer, and then I went to take the ferry back to Huangdao while Darryn and Mao Li went to the airport. This was a little worrisome as I was on my own, and my CHinese was horrible, but I had been practicing "how much money" and stuff like that, so I figured I could get a Taxi when I got to Huangdao. Though that's not what happened. As I walked out of the ferry terminal -- pretending to know where I was going, some Chinese woman asked me if I needed any help. I was blown away, her English was great! Then, she paid for my bus fair (I payed her back), gave me information about where to go to meet other foreigners, and (you're not going to believe this) literally walked me to my apartment building door! Definitely out of her way, but she thought I might get lost, and insisted on helping me. I'm pretty sure that was the nicest stranger interaction I've ever had!

So that's how the last few days have so far shaped up. My Chinese (which is only 4 days old) is still painful for people to hear, but I'm putting a strong effort forward. And every morning, I practice speaking the words with one of the support staff that works at the school. Hopefully soon I will have enough skill to practice with strangers.

And lastly, before I go. So far I've been really bad with responding to emails/messages. I will get on top of that when time flies into my hands. And since I can't see this blog, if you want me to see a comment, please don't put it on this blog -- I won't be able to see it for 14 or so months if you do.

Talk to you all soon!

Slap Costume

Artist: Duffy

It’s not easy to tell, but this pastel was part of a game. Well Duffy invented the game, and actually he was the only one that ever played the game, but it was an excellent pastel drawing game, and I simply have to share it with you.

The game is actually pretty simple. You take a dictionary and flip to a random page. On that page you’re allowed to pick any word you want (aside from the words in the definitions), but you must stick with the page you flipped to. You repeat this for a second page, which leaves you with two words. Your job now is to draw your interpretation of those two words. In Duffy’s case, he got the words slap and costume, which left him with a boy trick-or-treating in a giant hand costume. People being shocked at the ridiculous costume gave the kid little candy, and thus the text at the top of the drawing.

This isn’t the first mention of a pastel drawing game on House of Pastels. I also talked about another game in the post You Suddenly Realize that you Need to see a Psychiatrist. Duffy actually invented a second game during the same pastel drawing session, but we never had a chance to play it. The game involves one person drawing on one half of a piece of paper, and then covering that half, except for a small band which will connect to the other half. Next a second person continues drawing on the second half making sure to connect to the small band that the first person left visible. Once the second person is finished, the entire drawing is revealed to both artist.

Hockey Game

Artist: Hunter

During my most recent visit to Waterloo, I had the chance to meet Chantal’s boyfriend Hunter. After about a few hours, Hunter was giving me piggy pack rides while encouraging me to cause trouble. It was obvious that Hunter and I were soul mates, but as Chantal is a good friend of mine, I figure I’ll just have to get over my feelings.

If Chantal’s on your Facebook, you might immediately recognize what event Hunter is paying tribute to with his drawing. As I understand it, Chantal and Hunter went to a hockey game together...well I’m sure there’s more to the story than that, but I’ll just ruin it if I try to explain it. So just talk to Chantal about it, or read her blog, or at the very least, check out her Facebook pictures.

Curious Robot

Artist: Gaven

This is actually a remake of a previous drawing of mine. I first drew this picture about a year ago, but it was nearly impossible to tell what the picture was about. I liked what the picture was about so I held onto it, but I was disappointed that my message hadn’t had a proper chance to be communicated. So when I sat down one afternoon to draw with my sister Faria, I decided to take the opportunity to redo the picture. In the end, I decided my second picture, though far from perfect, beat-out the old one which will most likely find its way to a recycling bin.

In this picture, the “curious robot” is investigating what’s behind a pair of shutters. Though he doesn’t realize it, it will result in its death as the light will melt through the block of ice and the robot will fall to its death.

The theme: some things hurt to find out.

When I drew the first version, I had learned something which I realized would have been better left undiscovered. Sometimes I look back at pictures which I drew when I was upset and deem them as “whiny”, but this one serves as a reminder that not all information is wanted information, and thus, the reasons for why I first drew the original drawing has merely become a historical footnote for the drawing.

“Do You Think” ... “He Knows?”

Artist: Matthew

Matthew is the eldest of my two brothers. When I went to live with him for my final practicum, I decided to bring with me as little as possible. I left my computer at home, along with most of the odds and ends that usually follow me around. I only brought clothing, some science fiction stories, and of course, my pastels. When I brought out my pastel drawings to show Matthew and his wife Faria (I usually leave “law” out of “sister in law” when I refer to Faria, as “sister in law” sounds far too technical), Matthew immediately wanted to draw his own pastel drawing.

Now you probably don’t know Matthew, so I should first say a few things about him. He’s definitely smarter and more creative than me. That sounds sad [for me], but it really isn’t as he’s on my side (that is, if there’s ever an intergalactic war of the families, I’ll be on a pretty good team). He currently is a writer, which means it probably causes him considerable pain to read the many errors that I make in writing my blogs (I’m not going to pretend my blogs aren’t full of errors as many people have already given me lessons on the usage of English after reading some of my posts).

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that when Matthew put pastel to paper, he hadn’t an idea what would come of it. The impressive thing is that something did come of it.

The picture is of two headless men assembling a Mr. Potato Head. During the constructive of the potato’s face, the two figures wonder whether the potato knows that he is constructed by them.

If you think a little deeper, this picture says a lot more, but I will leave it to you to make your own interpretation of the picture.

Hearts and Brains

Artist: Gaven

If you’ve been a long-time reader of my Cute Qubit, the meaning of this picture might clearly jump out at you. Actually, if you’ve listened to me while I’ve vented about my body not being on my side, then you certainly should know what this picture is about.

Since I’ve talked about the conflict between my mind and heart far too many times, I’m not all that keen in getting into it again here. The basic idea is that I mark a clear division between my thoughts and my feelings, and the two groups don’t always agree (I’m sure this isn’t a unique action). Luckily I’m pretty good at figuring out who’s saying what, though this hasn’t prevented the heart from having its way when the brain had strongly opposed an action. Usually the heart waits for the brain to make a logical error that it can exploit. The mistake might only last a few seconds, but that’s plenty of time for all sorts of trouble to follow.

I began drawing this picture one night when Stella and I had particularly poor days. She suggested the marvellous idea of “having a beer and drawing with pastels at midnight,” an activity which I can see having no flaws.

The heart and brain were drawn by first drawing a solid heart and a solid brain each in a light colour. Then the two were coloured over with a darker colour, and the details of the two characters were created by scratching out lines using a pen lid.

The picture itself is of a heart who wants to pull a reluctant brain along its own path.

[Mel M.’s] Worries

Artist: Mel M.

Back in my last year of my undergrad, Mel’s house (she was a residence Don as well) was attached to mine. Because of this, we had the chance to get to know each other, but unfortunately we only drew pastel drawings together once. This is the picture from that occasion (which actually happened at Symposium; a pretty nice drawing environment).

Again this picture is about worries, but unfortunately it’s a little hard to see the items in the center of the picture. Starting in the top left corner and proceeding in a clockwise manner, her worries were:

• Relationship
• Work
• Children
• Home

Again, pretty similar worries compared to Emily and G, though when Mel drew this she was not in a relationship (unlike the other two). So from these three pictures, I can sum up what everyone (at least university students) worries about (in no specific order).

1. Work / Money (all 3)
2. Love / Relationship (Emily and Mel)
3. Children / Family (Mel and G)
4. Home (Emily and Mel)
5. Happiness (just G)
6. Death (just G)

Unfortunately that’s all the drawings of worries I have, so the study will have to stop at three. Hopefully future drawings will shed even more light on what we’re all busy worrying about.

[Emily A.’s] Worries

Artist: Emily A.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to figure out what Emily’s worries are from the above picture, so I’ll list them right from the start (from left to right).

• Love / Relationship
• [Future] House
• Money

Now both Emily and G are in relationships, so maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that their worries are similar, but it could be that we all just have very similar worries.

Emily is actually one of the few people that I also have a picture from her partner (Duffy) as well (H-Bomb and Richard is the other couple that I have pictures from both of the partners). I actually had a lot more pictures from couples, but people just keep on breaking up, so I’m down to two couples. Also, this is my first picture of Emily’s that I’ve shown, but I’ve actually written a whole blog post about her here, so do check that out if you don’t (or do) know her.

[Girjesh’s] Worries

Artist: Girjesh

Something that I’ve found interesting after seeing many of my friends draw pastel drawings is that a common theme for people to draw about is their worries. Over the next few posts, I want to show three pictures that have exactly that theme.

The first one is drawn by Girjesh, who is more commonly known by his friends as “G.” G is likely my smartest friend. We were both in physics together (G was specifically in Chemical Physics, Joint Mathematics), and we spent a lot of time together battling our Quantum Physics 3 class. G was of course a great friend to work with, but it was his criticisms of the academic world which I sincerely appreciated. He’s currently doing some real physics at the National Institute of Scientific Research at the university of Quebec.

G’s picture shows some of the worries that he was feeling the day he drew it. Starting in the top left corner and proceeding in a clockwise manner, his worries were:

• Money
• Death
• Family
• Happiness

Eye in Fist

Artist: Heather (H-Bomb)

This is the “worthy contender” I spoke of in the last post which could challenge H-Train's popular picture. It being the first picture that H-Bomb did that I’ve put on House of Pastels, I’d usually take this opportunity to talk about my relationship with H-Bomb, but I’ve actually already done that in my post titled Broken Boat. So instead I’m going to use this post to talk about the current state of the pastel wall in Kingston.

There are currently 41 pastel drawings on the wall from 12 different contributors. This is compared to the 117 pictures from 30 contributors that I’ve collected from the previous three pastel walls which stretched over a time period of 26 months. You can probably tell that I keep stats on this stuff.

Unfortunately I don’t have an up-to-date picture of the wall, but here’s a pretty recent photo:

Dots

Artist: Heather (H-Train)

Of all the pictures that exist on the current pastel wall in Kingston, this one took the longest to make. I think by the end, H-Train was happy to be finished with it, but it was well worth the time. It is probably the top ranked picture (by popular opinion from Stella and I’s guests), with only H-Bomb having a worthy contender. If that’s not enough, H-Train has just taken the lead as having the most contributions in the history of the pastel wall.

With respect to the picture itself, quite clearly it’s a bunch of dots, but I would be doing it a disservice if I said it was just a bunch of dots. It turns out (that is, it wasn’t planned by H-Train), that you can see a number of images amongst the dots. A face is probably the easiest to see, but a fellow playing the piano can also be seen. See if you can see anything else.

Bubbles

Artist: Gaven

This is a great picture! Okay, maybe for you in doesn’t mean anything or even look like very much, but for me it puts a feeling of inspiration into a concrete form.

As the title indicates, the picture is just a bunch of bubbles. Before drawing this pastel I had sketched out a few pictures of bubbles, but none of them were terribly great. It wasn’t until I had breakfast with Laura that I finally had the picture in my head that I wanted to draw.

So maybe I should start there.

I was lucky enough to have breakfast one morning with Laura. I actually didn’t know her that well, but my good friend Chantal was close to her, so I figured I should get to know her a little better if the opportunity arose.

The breakfast was a short one because Laura had to run off to a meeting, but while she was getting ready, she made me a peanut butter bagel and entertained me with a slide show of pictures from some of the trips she’d been on around the world (here is where I found out that Laura is an incredibly thoughtful host). While looking through the picture, I came across a picture of Laura blowing some bubbles. It was beautiful! The bubbles were emitting such a diverse set of vibrant colours.

Later that night I headed off to Shy’s for a painting party (yes, shy is that cool!), and drew what I had remembered from the picture. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I had fun with it. Actually, I drew the Nature Machine picture at the same party.

So who cares? Just a bunch of freakin’ bubbles! Well to understand why this means something to me, you have to understand a little more about me. I like to symbolize a lot of things in my life. I think of myself as a boat, I think of couples as ducks (cause you always see ducks in pairs), and to me, bubbles mean something specific, but it’s hard to explain, so bare with me here.

I think of bubbles as representing my scope of attention or concentration. Specifically, for any goal in my life, there exists an associated bubble which encompasses all the routes to that goal.

That sounds confusing. Here’s an example:

Imagine that your goal is that you want to meet some new interesting people. Well to do so, you usually go around and meet as many people as you can. Here your bubble would be expanding and encapsulating the new people that you are meeting. At a certain point you’ll realize that you’ve met 4 very interesting people. You then decide to devote your main attention on these 4 people, or another way you could look at it is that you are collapsing your bubble around the 4 people.

Well maybe it will be just me that finds bubbles interesting in this way. I’ll leave you now with the groovy picture that inspired me.

...you are special...

Artist: Trish

If you ever come to my house (or have come before) and draw a pastel drawing, it will usually join the other drawings on my pastel wall. But if you really like what you’ve done and want to keep it for yourself, of course you can just as easily take it home. Thus, I think of each pastel drawing on my wall and on this site as gifts, even though they weren’t formally given to me as gifts. Having said that, I have been given a lot of gifts over the years, but to my surprise, some people have drawn pictures on their own and then given them to me, quite formally, as a gift! I can think of few birthday or Christmas presents that would beat a pastel drawing with some real effort put into it. This picture here was a gift from Trish.

For those of you who aren’t in the lucky position of knowing who Trish is, I’ll tell you a little about her and how I know her.

I first met her the summer before 5th year when I was donning in V1. I actually don’t remember that so that doesn’t really count. I first honestly met her at Bomber (UW’s on campus bar) during the Winter term of 5th year, where she quickly caught my attention. Why? Well she told me that my pastel wall was really cool, but as far as I could remember, she had never seen it (she had been told about it by her cousin).

Guessing that she might be a very awesome person, I actively tried to get to know her better. Now I mean something specific when I use the word actively. There are some people that you meet in life that you realize you won’t be friends with unless you put a lot of extra effort in. This is usually the case with any friend who is not in close proximity to you (Trish lived in a different city). So clearly, if I wanted a chance at being Trish’s friend, I would have to put some effort in.

Anyway, I spent more time with Trish when chances arose, and I found out that my belief that she was an awesome person was a rather large understatement. She’s probably the most caring person I know. She wants to be a teacher (huge thumbs up for that), specifically for deaf children. Trish’s excitement and genuine love for sign language and the deaf community has been what has sparked my interest in the subject (unfortunately, I have not been able to encourage her to study any physics, so it seems that she is doing a better job at being a teacher than I am).

With regards to the picture, the image in the center is the sign for physics. This is cool for three reasons.

1) I love physics!
2) Though I know very little, I love sign language!
3) It would have been so easy to just draw the outline instead of drawing everything but the outline. Obviously Trish has put some heart into her work.

With respect to the border, I’ll type out exactly what she wrote about the drawing (yeah, it came with a letter explaining it!):

“I chose to do puzzle pieces as the border because there are many sides/dimensions etc. of you that make you who you are. I left some pieces blank, which represents the things I am yet to learn about you. I chose to do the rest of the pieces different colours because I think you are a very colourful person”

It’s hard to tell but the pieces have also been cut at the edge of the paper (the brown background is the carpet in my basement).

Well there you have, definitely one of the best pastel drawings in the collection!

Friends on a Large Foot

Artist: Gaven

I drew this picture way back when I was in 3rd year, and looking back on it now, I find it rather silly. At the time though, I was quite upset, be reasonably or not, and used the picture to vent my emotions. Many of my early pastel pictures were rather “venty,” but now I’m rarely pissed off, so these days I mostly just draw things I find interesting.

Sometimes I’m pretty vague about explaining the story behind my pictures, but since I don’t think anyone who reads this was actually part of the whole fiasco, I’ll be a little more specific.

So here’s the story: Awhile back I was chatting with a friend (call her Agnus) and we got on the topic of going camping. We decided that someday in the summer we should go camping together with the “gang.” The summer was a long way away, so it was just a tentative plan. Later I started going out with this girl (call her Beatrice), but that didn’t work out too well and so it abruptly ended. I was still new to the whole relationship world, so I didn’t take the breakup at all well. Anyway, Beatrice was part of the “gang,” that is, Beatrice was friends with Agnus, so the tentative plan of going camping seemed potentially at risk. But the gang pushed on and everyone went camping, well except for me, I wasn’t invited!

Okay, so I said before that a tentative plan was made, so it’s not really like I got kicked out of something I had planned, more like something I had mentioned, but that’s not how I took it. I saw it as a group that I considered as my friends, leaving me behind because it would have been awkward with Beatrice and all. The truth is it probably would have been, and the “gang” knew Beatrice far better than me, so it made sense that if someone had to go it was me. And further, the people that planed it probably didn’t even know that Agnus and I had discussed going. But these are all thoughts I refused to have at the time.

I still remember exactly how I was feeling; like a giant foot, straight from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, came out of nowhere to stomp on me.

So you probably understand this picture pretty well now. The people on the foot and the background are members of the “gang” (including Agnus and Beatrice). I of course am the one below.

If by some weird chance you are reading this and were a member of the gang, know that this is a historical post – no hard feelings remain, I’m just a baby about things from time to time.

Sunset

Artist: Farrah

On Tuesday of last week, I had the chance to go down to Waterloo for a couple of nights. I originally had planned to only go down for the night, but it soon became obvious to me that I would need to spend another night there running into friends. To go into detail about the few days would take far too long, so instead I’ll mention a few of the highlights.

• going out with Chantal, Kai, Brad, Lisa and Mary to share stories, pitchers, and a massive brown sheet to colour on (instead of crayons we used pastels; it was beautiful!)


• tossing the caber with Brad (which included finding a caber)


• having Jordan introduce me to the World of Warcraft (with me only getting his character killed once)


• drinking cans of beer with Eric at another first bomber Wednesday


• having Jackson host Jordan and me as we talk about only interesting things (including physics classes!)


• running into Abbie at unusually perfect times so that we could plan where we would wander


• phoning dons and enjoying their confusion at not knowing who I was, but then being disappointed when they figured it out


• enjoying Kai’s ultra-soft REV couch for the two nights I was there

There are of course other things, but the single greatest fun was right after Bomber on Wednesday night. I headed back to Kai’s place, where we chatted, and then chatted with a resident. Chatting turned to laughing, laughing turned to pastel drawings, and then other residents came and joined in on the fun. We eventually were so tired (do to it being considerably late), that we had to pull ourselves away from each other so we could go to bed/couch.

The whole experience meant a lot to me. It solidified in my heart that I liked drawing with friends, even people I had just met, more than going to the bomber (maybe that happens to everyone when they’re 24), and that I missed having residents of my own to draw pastel drawings with (and all the rest of the jazz that comes with the job of being a don). But I wasn’t sad, just very aware of how my life is different now from back when I was in Waterloo.

But this is House of Pastels, so I should probably talk about the picture. The following is from Farrah, which she completed in 5 or 10 minutes (probably closer to 5). Seeing such pretty art like this, coming from such a short period of time, reminds me how much I still have to learn about drawing.

Broken Boat

Artist: Gaven

Often, particular pastel drawings will give me the chance to talk about a friend. In this case, I have an excellent opportunity to talk about my good friend Heather T. (not the one from Waterloo, this is another Heather T. who’s from my old high school). Let me give some background information.

I got to know Heather during my last two years of High School. I don’t remember exactly how we met, but I do remember working on English presentations together, hanging out in the Student Council office with her, and sitting on grassy hills with her, only talking about interesting things. After graduation, we went to separate universities and never saw each other again, well, until teacher’s college. It was an unlikely encounter (we both took an extra year to complete undergrad) that instantly made my life in Kingston feel more like home. (As a note, the Heather T. from Waterloo also goes to teacher’s college at Queen’s, making it hard to separate the two in conversation)

The picture itself has nothing to do with Heather. I drew it when I felt that I needed to fix up some parts of my life that I had been neglecting. Thus the derelict boat represents me (if you know me well, I often like to think of myself as a boat), and the pills represent the fixing, specifically the fixing of the boat.

Unfortunately, when most people see this picture, they think that the person holding the pills is suicidal, which was definitely not my intention. When I showed Heather this picture (she has an arts degree), she understood what I was trying to get across, but as it was with everyone else, saw the pills as not being a representation of fixing the boat. After some conversation, I realized that a plank and a hammer would have been better items to hold as pills represent things like dependency, and often a bandage of a solution.

I was a little disappointed as I loved my picture. Of all the pictures I’ve done, it’s the one that I’ve put the most effort into, but it wasn’t right. But Heather further pointed out that the picture wasn’t wrong, it still represented what I wanted, but it also reflected my own views on how I see medication.

Hand

Artist: Gaven

This is the first and so far only picture I’ve drawn that has absolutely no symbolism; it’s just my right hand, but that’s not how it initially started. I originally wanted to draw a picture about procrastination. I was in my last year of undergrad and I was down to the last assignments of the year, but I found it incredibly hard to do boring work. My initial plan for this drawing was to have my hand with a rather gory spear through my wrist. I imagined that such an injury would impair the use of my hand. You can’t work with a damaged hand, and so this was to be my way of showing my inability to work.

After working for awhile on my hand, I realized that my picture wasn’t half bad. Not knowing how to properly draw a spear through my wrist, I decided to finish the picture with it just being my hand. Unfortunately, I tried unsuccessfully to draw my hand with my fingers partially curled. The effect failed and instead left shortish looking fingers.