I've started to get back into art.

When I was young, I loved doing arts and crafts; but somewhere along the way, I lost my confidence. I went through a lot of bullying as a kid and the constant criticisms internalized and became negative self-talk.

I'd start to draw or paint, but the sketch didn't look like I wanted it to in my head, and I'd hear all the criticisms I'd gathered. I would get discouraged and stop drawing. I felt good about other things I did, like jewelry design and floral arrangements, but I stopped drawing.

For a while after my injuries, writing and doing anything with my hands was impossible. Part of my occupational therapy was coloring, so I started doing that. My dexterity improved, and when I started this blog, I started doing some graphic design: website headers, graphics for posts, etc. I improved at that and decided to try out digital art too.

I got a stylus for my tablet and some apps and tried it out. At first, it was just doodles that I didn't even save; but then they started to look good! I started to try to challenge myself to recreating pictures. Once I felt comfortable with that, I started developing my own style, mixing real, often anatomical drawings, with various other subjects to draw attention to emotions and issues such as sexism or ableism.

I've been going through a really stressful time that has made writing more difficult, so I've been creating a lot of art. It's difficult to organize my thoughts into words right now, but I can mentally escape into my art. It's been cathartic to create art about the issues I experience and also using my scans as a base. I've created several using my brain MRI scans and some using anatomical drawings of the parts that experience the most symptoms.

I hope to be able to share my art in galleries and exhibits sometime, as well as online! Check out my Tiktok for time lapse videos creating some of the pieces!