"The Happy Place"-Self Portrait(Pencil Drawing)

Hi beloved steemians

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It's good to feel strong to blog after being down for some days. I haven't been feeling too strong lately but I am alright now. As I was going though my gallery, I saw this piece I made and I am very sure that I haven't shared it with us before.

What inspired this piece was a breakthrough from depression, anger, hate and loneliness. In the course of my pursuit for excellence, I got so depressed, lonely, and I felt kind of rejected. I battled this with myself for so long and I decided to look for answers because I wasn't liking my current situation.

I looked for answers and found one. I saw in a quote that the road to success is quite a lonely one, but when the goal is met, things fall back in place so I heed to that and decided to find happiness within. I then realised that our happiness is in our hands, we don't need approval from anyone to be happy. We owe ourselves that.

It wasn't long, I started finding happiness within. I created some imaginary friends in my mind, I created mentors too in my mind and I wasn't lonely anymore. I would sit in my room and start a conversation with my imaginary friends in my mind and even when I am working. I felt the need to do so because while in this lonely state, I still needed someone or something to motivate me because the real world or things I saw on social media were started to get to me. I decided to go off and find the happiness inside me first so I won't be troubled by anything I see.

During this time, I felt very lazy as my mind wouldn't let me do anything because I was wallowing in my sadness. So with the help of this imaginary mentors, I was able to
Pick up my pace again.

At some point I stopped and asked myself, "I hope I am not losing Sanity" but since It was helping get back myself, I kept on with the lone happy life. I finally stepped out of that lone situation when I got the answers that "true happiness is in our hands" we are responsible for our happiness.

I know we have lots of people battling with this same issue and I hope you find answers to where and how you can locate thy peace.

This piece was done with

• generals charcoal pencils
• soft graphite pencils
• tortillons or blending stump
• tombow mono zero Elastomer eraser
• kneaded eraser
• flat brushes, makeup brushes
• tissue paper
• Drawing board
• A clean sheet of small paper

The function of these materials are:

• General's charcoal pencil: A chalky medium, used in drawing/shading dark tones and also to add dark details in drawing

• Soft Graphite pencils: Used to draw outlines and also add shades in drawing

• Tortillon/blending stump: a soft paper-like material used mainly for blending and to add details in drawing

• Tissue paper: Used for blending

• Soft flat brushes/makeup brushes: Used also for blending. The different textures of the brush gives different textures in the drawing

• Tombow mono zero Elastomer eraser: used to clean unwanted part and also add highlights in drawing

• Kneaded eraer: An eraser that can be folded to any shape, used also to add soft highlights and also clean unwanted parts in drawing

• Paper: A base where we draw on. And about papers, the quality of paper matters, there are some that can hold our chalky medium more than others. But I most of the time make use of the pelican papers and bristol(strathmore) paper

• A clean sheet of paper: This can be a very small sheet of paper that can be used to place our hands when drawing to avoid smudging our drawing.

Smudging is basically messing up our drawing with dirt's on our fingers. It can be dirt's from the oils on our hands or charcoal residue. Sometimes It is difficult to clean the dirt's off our drawings so it is best we avoid smudging our drawings.

You can watch the video of this piece here