Most people have a little collection of childhood stuff stashed away somewhere — hand-written letters, photos, dusty trophies, items of genuine sentiment, random-crap-the-importance-of-which-you-can-no-longer-recall…
My childhood friend aptly calls it his “Box of Shame”!
Mine still lives at my mom’s, in my childhood cupboard. On a recent trip to visit my mom in Kimberley, I valiantly attempted to reduce the amount of stuff still living in that cupboard (because let’s face it — a CUPBOARD of Shame is surely not something one should hang onto!). Now, I refer to this exercise as a valiant attempt, since it was much more difficult than I thought it would be and I got rid of far less than was sensible. The memories that were evoked were just ridiculous: I repeatedly whipped through happy-sad-confused-angry-hurt-suprised-horrified-embarrased-joyous-regretful-nostalgic-happy…
And yes - shameful! Man, we do and say stupid things when we’re young. Even more shockingly — we choose keep the evidence!!!
Ok, so now that I’ve given you some context —
From within my Box of Shame emerged a collection of old drawings. When I was little, I loved drawing animals and birds (and it’s really cool to see how many of the same critters I’ve unknowingly revisited as an adult!). Up until I recently completed Rebecca’s portrait, it has literally been decades since I last drew/painted a human subject. But back in high school, it was really my go-to!
Now, perhaps it was only because I was a rebellious teenager - determined to push the boundaries and elicit as much shock as possible from the poor adults in my life - but I really enjoyed depicting scantily dressed humans!
In fact, after seeing some of my other sketches, a couple of boys in my class commissioned me to draw their ‘fantasy girl’: A mesmerising maiden with a come-hither expression, carefully crafted from various a lass’… umm... bits! In less fluffy language: They selected body parts, poses, hairstyles, etc etc from various photos to create what they thought of as the Ultra Babe. And where did the photos come from, you ask? They loaned me their illicit collection of girlie magazines, with neat little markers in the pages: “Her face”; “This pose”; “Her lingerie”… Let me tell you — It was quite the eye-opener!
Whilst these drawings were stored in my Box of Shame, I’m not particularly embarrassed by them. Most are actually quite modest (I can’t actually remember if it was my decision to cover up Ultra Babe’s bits, or if I was instructed to do so… Pretty sure it was the former!), and some of them show pretty good technique (I’m referring to my artistic skill, of course!). Since I had no ambition to become a professional artist as a kid, it’s nice that so many of my drawings survived in the archives this long. Yes, it’s nice to see how far I’ve come. More importantly, it’s really, really nice to think that art meant so much to me back then that I kept piles of old artworks in my Box of Shame for all these years!
So, I’m not embarrassed by the nudie artworks. It sure makes you wonder what other horrors escaped my Box of Shame…!
The Ultra Babe, along with a small, carefully curated, PG13 collection of my artworks depicting human subjects:
