Sketches of Yore

I used to be quite the prolific drawer in my youth. This kind, not that kind. Recently, I pulled a load of my old stuff out of storage, and uncovered a plethora of sketches drawn up during my childhood. Flipping through the sheaves of artwork brought back quite a few memories. It also provided adult me with a wonderful glimpse into the mind that was young me. Poring over the fruits of my creative impulses, now protected from the hormonal mire that was my adolescent brain by an irreversible temporal buffer, I was able to analyze the works with a more objective, dare I say wiser, eye.

I drew a number of conclusions while sifting through the ephemera of my past:

• I was a weird kid in quite an amusing sort of way.
• Stuff that I thought was super awesome at the time often did not hold up to later scrutiny.
• I was politically opinionated in a way that only unfiltered, too-smart kids can be: driven by a desire to seem edgy or at least not dull, but which in practice comes across as reactionary.
• I had a real emo streak before "emo" was a word. Lots of pictures of moody teens, half-drawn faces, single eyes and leafless trees.

I have wanted to scan my earlier scribblings into a digital format for some time now. After this most recent perusal, I finally began that process. I think I will share a selection of them here, along with the stories... when they exist behind just what the heck I was thinking.

Portrait of the artist at work

I actually have several drawings related to unorthodox systems for spaceflight