#draw badly

I was late to start reading the books. In 1998, when the first book came out in the United States, my kids were babies. Our bookshelves were full of Dr. Seuss and Sandra Boynton. I wasn’t paying attention to chapter books for grade schoolers.

But the buzz was inescapable. By the time the fourth book was out in 2000, I began to think I was probably missing out on something big. Then, at a bookstore, I found the first three paperbacks on sale in celebration of the new hardcover. The store staff had built elaborate towers of the books and the display was irresistible.

I gave in and bought the first book...and didn’t put it down for two days. Every minute that my kids didn’t need both my eyes and two hands on them was spent reading, and when I reached the end I turned right back to the first page and began again.

I was enthralled in a way I hadn’t been since I was a kid. Better late than never, I was hooked.

If you’d asked me then who constituted the Harry Potter fandom, I would have thought first of overtired children in costume at midnight book launch parties. And I would have been so, so wrong. As in fandoms going all the way back to the original series of Star Trek, the creatives of the Potter fandom are, mostly, adult women.

I stumbled into the fandom in summer 2016, when I read an article about Potter fan creations. I discovered that people were exploring these stories further in ways I hadn’t ever considered.

What if Remus Lupin and Sirius Black had been permitted to raise Harry?

What if Draco had accepted Albus Dumbledore’s offer of help?

What if Slytherin student Cassius Warrington, who put his name in the Goblet of Fire, had been selected as the Triwizard champion to represent Hogwarts, and thus had been killed as “the spare” in the graveyard of Little Hangleton?

What if Harry and Draco both became Aurors?

What if Harry and Draco fell in love?

That relationship is known as “Drarry.” And I ship it.

I immersed myself in fanfiction. It was overwhelming, intoxicating, a neverending ocean of some of the best fiction I’ve ever read. Without hyperbole, it changed my life.

Certain themes are explored frequently in Potter fanfic: How do we make choices? How do we respond to stress or fear? What is redemption, and atonement? How do we change after being on the wrong path for a long time?

Inspired by these stories, I drew on the strengths of all four Hogwarts houses to make changes in my own life. I credit the fic writers for showing me worlds of potential. If Harry Potter can be a professional dancer, and Draco Malfoy can own a magical yarn shop, what could ever be impossible?

At first I was only an appreciative audience for everyone else’s creativity. Fiction has never been my strength, and certainly -- I thought -- I was no kind of visual artist. I contributed Drarry poetry, for the few readers who enjoyed it. It was something, at least.

In June 2018, two of the best-known Drarry authors announced the Draw Drarry Badly Challenge. You don’t have to be a great artist to make fanart, they said. There’s room for everyone to make art to celebrate the characters we all loved. Draw something ridiculous with your total lack of art talent, post it, and tag your friends to do it too.

When I was tagged, I panicked. I have MS. My hands shake and it’s difficult to hold a pen. I didn’t want my Bad Drarry art to be bad for that reason. So I hauled out some craft supplies that had lain idle for years, and made goofy little stick figures with a straight-edge papercutter and strips of colored cardstock.

They got more response than anything else I’d made in fandom. The ten people who knew me clamored for more.

I started illustrating scenes from Drarry fics that were especially silly in blocks of colored paper. There was no expectation of realism. It was liberating. I didn’t have to make hands or faces or even clothes. I tried every weird idea I had, and it was okay because it was supposed to be bad. It was exuberantly terrible art, and I made piles of it.

I made so much bad art that I started getting better at it. I developed a stronger sense of color coordination, perspective, visual storytelling, and ways to combine textures and materials.

I’m an anxious perfectionist who never tries to do anything new unless I’m pretty sure I’ll be instantly good at it. I never would have tried any of this without the permission -- the mandate -- to make something absurd for the love of the story.

As of this morning I have 423 Tumblr followers who know me primarily as an artist. The past few years have been some of the best of my life.

If you’re like me and you’ve never thought of yourself as an artist, I’m here, improbably, at a microphone!, to invite you to make a piece of art that SUCKS. Start, maybe, with a story you’ve read a thousand times. Grab a crayon, or a tray of watercolors, or macaroni noodles and glitter glue, and make something.

In whatever medium you choose, draw badly. And keep going.