There comes a time when a mind turns inward and begins to learn that self is as complicated and in need of exploration as any African jungle or surface of a distant planet.
The Paffoonies today all come from my sixth grade school notebook. When that school year ended I owned one book of my own, Rudyard Kipling’s First Jungle Book, the paperback version. I kept my colored pencil drawings in my school notebook, and I kept the notebook in my bedroom to continue to fill it with drawings on notebook paper.
As you can see, the notebook is age-worn and falling apart, but I still have it. It still contains my twelve-year-old artistic visions, the beginnings of who I am as a thinking, drawing, story-telling human being.
At one point I even had a package of pink notebook paper.
So I admit it. I was a dorky, weird child. And I drew a lot of weird pictures at twelve. Now you have some of the evidence.
Catch a Falling Star 
You have drawings from when you were 12? Some of these remind me of drawings I did when I was between 5 and 8. But, I have no old works to review/share, sadly. Yet, some part of me feels like what does it matter. It was in the past. I remember some of it. I create new when inspiration strikes. I move on like the trees.
The biplane picture is awesome and reminds me of the days I was obsessed with Atari’s Combat and flight simulators. So many memories of games focused on flying and shooting down war aircraft.
I still have these pictures probably because of my obsessive-compulsive hoarding disorder. I have given many works of art away as gifts, but I believe I have maniacally hoarded most of what I have drawn.
Yea, but hoarding from the age of 12? Either your parents helped or they let you do it yourself. I did not have that luxury. And, when my parents no longer respected my work, keeping it was almost futile. Working in secret was exhausting. I had no locks or safe to hide anything away. Nothing was safe. Eventually, I stopped creating for a long while.
I am sorry you had to do that in secret. My parents knew about my hoarding and my art-ing and never tried to stop me. I have probably fifteen notebooks full of stuff I have saved, and this notebook was only the oldest one. My parents knew I wouldn’t want them to throw anything out… and my Grandma Beyer was a worse old string-saver than me. It runs in the family.
Reblogged this on Catch a Falling Star and commented:
Here’s a post about my artistical past. And I do know that “artistical” isn’t a real word, but, hey, I’m very artistical.