landscapes of depression

[edenfalling]

AKA, Liz's continuing adventures in RE arts-&-crafts. *sigh*

The top drawing was meant to be a picture about love -- either an illustration of the concept of love, or of a specific thing (or person) that I love. Except it seems to have turned into a milder variation of my old depression sketches. (Of which the bottom drawing is the only example I still have saved; I threw most of them out because who wants to dwell on that shit?) It's mostly open sky instead of jagged mountains closing off the horizon, but the weird color choices and the rhythmic repetition of forms are similar and rain is not what I'd call a cheerful subject.

(It can be a peaceful subject! Which is what I suspect I meant to draw -- soft gentle rain over trees and water -- but yeah, not quite what I ended up with.)

...

I think I need to get more sleep. :-/

[link to original post, for when Tumblr inevitably breaks the embedded images]

Comments

[branchandroot]

*interested* The colors are inverted, though. In love, the green is the ground and the water is blue, which feels properly oriented, while in depression the green is the sky, which feels more inverted (and scary if you come from tornado country). The warm colors for the sky, especially for such fluffy, round clouds, is consonant with the concept of love in our culture, I think. The density of the texture looks like it may just be your personal art style. I wouldn't have thought they were part of a continuity if you hadn't said so.

[edenfalling]

I think it's the combination of the relatively normal earth and water with the red sky that throws me -- by the time I got to coloring the sky, I wasn't thinking about love anymore so it reads more as "red sky at morning, sailors take warning" to me, or maybe just blood. Also the dark blue rain slanting insistently against the red backdrop is kind of... it is too uniformly spread in contrast to the weirdly spaced-apart trees, and then that combined with the clouds being colored in rather than left blank and fluffy creates (for me, anyway) a fainter version of the ominous "I am closing off all your options" effect of my classic depression landscapes.

I think what really gets me about the bottom sketch (aside from the way the interior contour lines on the mountains refuse to line up in a consistently intelligible pattern and the utter barrenness of the landscape -- no life whatsoever) is that I drew a barrier in the sky, after I'd already broken it up and trapped it into tiny fragments. The symbolism is not subtle. And yet I drew that damned picture over and over all through my teens and nearly until my 21st birthday without realizing it was a metaphor for the inside of my head. O_o

[branchandroot]

*nods* I can see what you mean. The regularity of the rain is very insistent.

*rueful* And isn't that always how it is? You don't see it until you're at least a little out of it. *considers* Which does beg the question: what is it you feel is closing you in now?

[edenfalling]

what is it you feel is closing you in now?

That is indeed the question! At a guess, deadlines -- I need to finish my online college application by June 1, and I have a story for a ficathon due on Friday that I have yet to start writing (though I have been outlining it for a while). And probably also general lack of sleep, since that never helps anything.

[branchandroot]

Lots of bleah, yeah, and I imagine the applications are especially stressful, all considered. But at least it's rain, this time, and not rock!