I can do this, I can do this. I can, I can, I can!

[thewhitelily]

I've had that song in my head all day, because it's still New Frontiers month over at ushobwri, and there's been an... idea, niggling away in the back of my mind for the last month, about something that is a really new frontier for me.

I made a throwaway comparison in an LJ post a while ago, between Sherlock and, well, we'll get to that, but the thing is it gave me a really vivid mental image.  As usual, it was the concept of a junction point where a whole lot of plot arcs intersect to provide an amazing payoff, but... it came in the form of a mental image.  And I know how the characters get there, and I know what they're saying, but the thing is that this is a visual gag.  And while I could have written a story, and it would have been good, it doesn't actually work nearly as well in words as that image in my mind.

I left high school after thirteen years of compulsary art utterly convinced that I was hopeless at drawing and in fact any kind of visual arts.  But... as it turned out, it wasn't entirely true.  Because when we moved into our current house some five years after that, it had a clear glass shower screen, and I started sketching with my finger in the fog in the shower, every morning.  Transient thoughts, either written or sketched and then washed away moments later.  It's really cleansing, actually.  In more ways than one.  :P  When I went on a nine week backpacking trip in Europe, I hadn't even realised how much I missed that until I got home and stepped in the shower, saw the fog and... just relaxed, as I started sketching.

Now, I have three little kids.  I'm constantly being asked to draw something for them.  A dinosaur, or a pirate ship, or whatever.  And I do, and they look, you know, recognisable.  With a possible bonus of being an age appropriate outline for cutting out.  And a year or so ago, when our eldest was inappropriately resistant to doing any kind of drawing/writing, I decided to start sitting with him and sketching my own pictures on a piece of paper.  I write best on a computer, but if that's all the kids see of what I do for myself, it's not exactly modelling writing/creative behaviour in a medium they understand, right?  And maybe I didn't do it every day, or even every week--I'm a busy woman--but it happened sometimes.  And whether it was partially seeing me doing it, or whether it was simply that was when the lightbulb went on in his head, he started drawing, and then writing.  As a byproduct, some of the things I created where unexpectedly awesome.

I also left high school convinced I couldn't write prose, and in fact that all humanities were for the birds.  But we all know how that worked out.  So, inspired by the epic efforts of various Shoobies in New Frontiers month, and the solid persistence of this image in my mind, I decided to give it a go.  It took me two days.  Three, including scanning it in and cleaning up the smudges on the background.  It is far beyond anything I've ever attempted before.  It bugs me that it's not perfect, but nothing short of photorealism would ever be perfect to me because, well, my brain, and it is definitely perfect to the limits of my skill.  It was that after about an hour, because it is far, far, far beyond where I thought the limits of my skill were.

I give you: The Baker Street Boys Lose a Bet

I think I need to stop saying I can't draw, right?  Yeah, that's what I thought.