Your temperament is refelected in your work

I’m staring at my drawing from the past week and this could not seem to be more true. What was a beautiful depiction of Venice waterways turned into an sketchy, dirty, and unrealistic demonstration of my poor mixed-media use. The buildings are slanted, the windows are crooked, and the blue azure sky is polluted with brown smudges from my anxious, shaking, and disappointed fingers. To make matters worse, the thought of inhaling pastel dust, in light of my recent sore throat and coughing, turned art into a restrictive, suffocating activity, rather than the calm though fleeting escape it usually is for me. I took it home to work on during spring break and I haven’t touched it until today, when I unrolled the crinkled paper and was forced to confront how terrible it looked. I have the frustrating urge to tear it apart and scrunch up the pieces and throw them in the nearest trash can. But I don’t leave a job undone.

This reminds me of pathetic fallacy, except applied to health and productivity/quality of work rather than weather. I just want to finish this and say no more-no more being reminded of all the angst trapped within layers of color pencil and pastel, no more sharpners that only break the lead and eat up my pencils, and no more erasers that not only fail to undo my mistakes but rather make matters worse by smudging unwanted colors together in a conglomeration of ugliness. I can finish this. I can finish this. Then, it’s time for something new.