My project today was to repair an old creative injury I uncovered in Week One and recreate my drawing of the LIFE magazine cover of Michael Jackson and his animals. Here’s how it went.

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On every second Saturday of the month, I host a small morning gathering at my house with friends. We start with backyard qigong, followed by scrambled eggs and homemade waffles with all the toppings. After eating, we all work on our own artistic projects.

As I chatted with friends, I started sketching the outlines of my magazine cover first.

After the crew moved onto other Saturday shenanigans, I kept drawing and adding some color with colored pencils.

I also paused to read the entire article. As I read the story and colored my picture alone, I noticed tears forming in the corner of my eyes. I kept asking myself what that was about, and never fully put my finger on it, but it felt like a sense of completion. This piece of art that I had previously only been able to lightly recall in my memory was now a tangible thing on my dining room table.

It was something special for me to nurture my “creative injury” and take myself back through these memories. I wondered how long I spent on the first one I drew in 1993. I wondered what it was about Michael Jackson that fascinated 12-year-old me so.

Was it that he never wanted to grow up? Like Peter Pan? Or was it because he built a movie theater with space for hospital beds for kids with cancer to experience movies in the theater? Or was it because he designed his house like a castle and had 128,000 flowers and 70 employees caring for it all? Or was it simply because I love animals and thought it was pretty cool that he had a whole zoo?

I didn’t have a lot of colors to choose from – I couldn’t find a black colored pencil! But I had a black watercolor pencil, so I ended up making this a watercolor painting instead.

All was not lost, and as I immersed myself back into the magazine and the process of drawing, I did feel a little bit like a 12-year-old again as I struggled to get the lines to do what I wanted, to shade correctly, and to draw MJ’s face. I erased his face over and over and left it for the very last thing! I really had fun drawing the parrot. The bird is the only part that is just in colored pencils.

After painting everything including the background, I finally added MJ’s hair and smile for the last time. I noticed how childish my drawing looks, and still felt proud of what I created. At fist, I was critical of my inability to draw the faces like I wanted, but I let it go and remembered how practice is needed for mastery of anything. Plus, I was channeling my inner child for this one anyway.

Working on this piece was fun! Most of my Saturday was spent smoothing out the watercolors and redrawing Michael’s face, but I can’t think of a better way to spend my day.

Julia Cameron just might be onto something with this The Artist’s Way process. 🙂

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