Overcoming boredom during the pandemic has easily allowed leeway for experimentation and self-discovery. I have had friends learn to play the ukulele, develop a passion for cooking, launch pseudonymous social media accounts to showcase their electric guitar skills, and even become adequately decent at skateboarding.
Me? I didn’t learn anything new for the first couple of months so much as I used my free time to perfect my existing skills—sitting at the piano for hours at a time, practicing dance routines in the kitchen as I waited for tea to boil, and even making my friends bracelets using yarn I’ve had since the age of seven. I’ll admit—as rewarding as it was to focus on self-improvement, I ached to experience the serotonin rush of successfully stumbling upon a new hobby and entering the honeymoon phase of having it consume my every waking thought.
And one day, as though the universe read my mind, it happened—as I wiped clean the chalkboard wall in my best friend’s room, I drew inspiration from Levi Ackerman fanart I had once seen, picked up some chalk, put up a picture for reference, and drew him as best as I could. I have no shame in saying that my pride in that sketch spurred me to try some more, and chalkboard drawings quickly piqued my interest and took my world by storm.
Dated since Paleolithic times, chalk drawing represents one of the earliest forms of human artistic expression. The Paleolithic technique consisted of using natural stone available in either black, white, or sanguine (derived from the French word for blood-red), and although it was primarily used for making preliminary sketches of a larger work, it was later developed as an artistic medium in its own right in the late Renaissance period (late sixteenth century). Famous artists including da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo habitually used chalks for their drawings, as they were deemed the most effective for quick sketches and simple-lined drawings. Later, twentieth century artists, including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, pioneered its use for finished works.
And yet, I’ve rarely heard of chalk being taken into consideration in discussions about art. It is often brushed off as simplistic, nothing more than the mere foundation over which a more ‘complex’ work of art shall be painted. We often centre our focus on pencil sketches, acrylic paints, and digital art (all of which, by the way, are absolutely beautiful), inadvertently forgetting to acknowledge this ancient art form which has sneakily climbed its way into our everyday modern lives! A core memory of mine—and I believe it would be one for many others as well—is using chalk to draw the hopscotch outline on our driveway and getting all my fingers (and consequently my shorts) smudged with reds, blues, and yellows. I also often see chalk used for blackboard café menus, for the interior decoration of a smoothie place my family frequently visits, and to outline the basic architecture of in-progress construction projects. Chalk has been so flawlessly ingrained into my everyday life that I hadn’t taken note of it until the day my best friend wanted to redo her chalkboard wall, and I took it upon myself to do so.
Returning to chalk drawing as a young adult is quite interesting for two reasons: first, it made me quite nostalgic for my hopscotch-playing days; and second, it instilled in me a deeper sense of appreciation for its versatility and simplicity. As a detail-oriented person, I found it extremely therapeutic to rely on simple lines and occasional blending to create sketches of my favorite anime characters (and of my best friend) as accurately as possible. With pencil sketching (a past hobby of mine), you need to blend properly, adjust the angle at which you hold the pencil, create lines of different thicknesses using varying pressures, and use a variety of pencil types, tools, and techniques if you’re looking for a precise sketch, and so it takes much more expertise. Don’t get me wrong—it’s beyond rewarding for a pencil drawing to be accurate because it can produce beautiful results. Pencil drawing just requires an immense amount of patience—a luxury I no longer have—and chalks have provided me with a medium to quickly sketch a face for an hour, admire it for the next three, and reset.
Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve dabbled with a variety of different creative art forms—I’ve experimented with GarageBand to make music (not as easy as Clairo and mxmtoon make it sound), I’ve painted a self-portrait, and I’ve completed a couple of sketches—but none have struck a chord with me as much as chalkboard drawing did. Not to sound immodest, but I feel really proud of the sketches I have completed and they genuinely provide me with a sense of fulfillment—it’s that much fun.
Plus, I’ll admit that the sight of smudged colourful fingers is quite satisfying, and I definitely recommend anyone reading this to invest in a chalkboard and go crazy.
I wouldn’t have spent my free time in quarantine any other way.
It’s great you turned to art during the pandemic I have a similar story myself.