DYING ART

Out of the blue, I got asked to do some illustrations the other day.

Naturally, I declined.

“Why?” you might ask “Is this not some glorious opportunity to add to your reputation and bank balance?”

Probably not.

Still, when someone you’ve had very little to do within perhaps a decade or more sends you an email asking “Do you still draw?” it is a time to reflect soberly upon where your life actually is at the moment.

After all, I did used to draw. Quite a lot, actually. It just stopped being “fun” when I had to try and earn a crust doing so, and somehow, because I was doing it during the daytime in my role as one of life’s underlings, it somehow never seemed like something that I’d want to be doing when I got home in order to unwind.

Oh, I know that there are people who make quite a tidy living by coming home from work and doing another day’s work on their “freelance” stuff, but I tend to think that that’s the sort of thing that younger, fresher, more eager minds than mine want to spend their lives doing.

It’s a bit like the wordsmithery, to be honest. Sitting here blogging to the indifferent world is what I do for “fun…” but, in the unlikely event of someone deciding on commissioning me to write some words for them, the shutters would bang down, the “significance” curve would head towards the sky, and the fear would grip me and, ultimately, I know that not a word would seep out.

(So, if you ever want to find a way to finally shut me up… Then you know precisely what to do, don’t you…?)

Drawing for fun is something that I do still do from time to time, actually. Usually when I’m on holiday, or when an “amusing” idea strikes me, but drawing to someone else’s agenda, well, that’s really no fun at all.

The enquiry was something to do with a children’s book… something to do with jungle animals, and, because I’m me, even after having said no, I couldn’t resist doing the slightly rubbish pencil scribble which is attached to this posting, just to make sure that the immediate idea I had escaped from my head and didn’t lurk inside there colouring my dreams.

I gave a few reasons or excuses for not wanting to pursue the matter; Being far too “rusty” to be much good at it, my mother’s Estate consuming all of my weekends, time-management issues, all of the usual guff… but the truth is that I just don’t think that I could do it any more, and, I suspect, that I don’t have the patience for it, either, and I do believe that I was always a bit rubbish at it anyway.

And also, in my admittedly limited experience of such things, I decided that it would probably involve a great deal of effort for very little reward, a massive amount of annoyance when my efforts turned out to be “not quite what he had in mind” and, eventually, as the extended silences stretched on and my confidence collapsed accordingly, I would probably end up letting him down completely in the end.

Either that, or he wouldn’t like what I’d done, or the finish, or the style, or something else, and I’d stroll away from the situation feeling all bitter and twisted like I used to do in the old days.

To be honest though, during my few forays into “Commercial Illustration” I very quickly realised that I really dislike doing several drawings of the same thing because doing things more than once utterly bored me, and those “could you do something similar but at a slightly different angle” chats were just too bloody annoying for words when you’d just spent a couple of days on something.

Also, I was never really good enough. I’ve always been a mid-range, mid-ability scribbler and, whilst this means that I could make a living, it was never going to mean that I showed any natural flair or talent for it which would make me a unique and sought after commodity.

No genius living here, Mrs MacTavish…

Of course, what I should be doing is grabbing the opportunity with both hands. After all, when you reach my age and have a career path like mine, it’s probably a good idea to use whatever pitifully few contacts you have left to make sure that you’ve got something you could do to earn a crust once you’ve been flung onto life’s scrapheap as well as giving some thought towards having a “profitable sideline” that I’m known for and can be relied upon to fulfil.

Sadly, I’ve never been much of a one for forward planning and thinking about what I could do rather than what I couldn’t, so I never seemed to achieve such wisdom.

In the end, I passed on the details of another friend who I thought might be better at it and thought I should let sleeping dogs lie.

Interestingly, it seems to have been a week for old friends getting in touch. I got an email (or personal message or somesuch) from an old college friend, and we exchanged a few interesting memories of the old days for a couple of hours, and it was also the birthday of another old friend from those times this week, so I had a brief chat to her, too.

Maybe we’re all just getting to that kind of an age.

After all, once you start to reach those “significant” ages, we all want to cling together in the cave, staying as close to the receding pool of firelight as we can, whilst the darkness full of those unseen wild animals closes in around us.