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I drew this girl on the train in the same drawing session as the first Sketchbook Time. I decided to play around with markers in on this one. This is the second video uploaded in about 2 years... EXCITING!!! And glad to be back.
While working on this mural:
in West Oakland one of the artists on the mural was shot and killed right in front of me. Though I had witnessed similar events while growing up in South Central Los Angeles - this one was most devastating because I was in a happy place creating art and the was abruptly slammed into another reality in an instant and forces to stomach it.
As the weeks and months progressed I began to spiral downward into a very dark place where I'd lost the thirst to do art. I became a civilian - stopped drawing, painting, creating video or posts for my blog. I even began to not like teaching where I quite teaching at a site I had been for almost a decade... just simply walked away from it. Ofcourse this caused a financial tornado... I just didn't care.
Some how I got tired of being down and dormant so I began to seek ways to heal my spirit. Lots of reading and practices later I'm finally beginning to get aroused by art again. I sort of had to force myself to look at art and films and listen to music etc. This was not as easy as it sounds. You have to really want out of depression in order to get out of it. I just didn't like the life of not creating.
I was invited to join an organization where I was teaching art and life skills in Bay Area Juvenile Hall facilities. This helped to bring me back to life. The youth were amazed by my work and some of my ideas which was inspirational for me. They'ed ask me to draw pictures of them and then watched me paint the portraits. I did many demos and to see how much they appreciated seeing me ( a positive role model) was eye opening.
I showed them my youtube videos (they don't have internet access in juvenile hall so I had to burn my videos to DVD) and they asked for more... but I did have anymore because I had stopped due to depression. They kept asking me to do more so over time I tried but just wasn't there yet. Finally - now I'm inspired enough to upload again. I'm excited about the future of my channel so thanks for viewing this video, thumbs upin' and everything else.
