[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.