...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!