how to draw the sun (when you aren’t an artist)
1. find the sun. watch how she dances, slipping in and out of your mind, as if she were a hazy memory from days you hardly remember. look within every memory locked inside your dusty brain. pull out those rusted keys from their home in your heart and unlock the door within the deepest parts of who you are.
2. talk to her. tell her how you’d always cry whenever you skinned your knees, or how you had always wanted a light-up scooter. tell her how it feels to swing, with your body cutting the air like a joyful pendulum. tell her about those old songs you’d listen to, the ones that you secretly downloaded again. tell her how some days, you just lie down, blasting music so loud that it slips your mind to ever unplug the headphones as you drift into blissful sleep. tell her everything about you. let her know you like you know her, let her love you as you love her.
3. begin sketching her. build the structure. paint an image in your head of a goddess, then try and capture some of that holy life, even if it is only a sliver of the light the sun gives you. draw how she laughs, how she cries. imprint in your mind the image of her perfection. then, put a pencil in your shaking hands, and begin to draw.
4. fall. fall in love with the sun. fall for her. fall in love for how she creates the world herself with one breath, how her smile is brighter than a million dying galaxies. fall for how she turns your monochrome into red, yellow, orange, blue. fall for the colors you’ve never seen before. love the sun like you’ve never loved before.
5. begin painting. let it be sloppy sometimes. make it real. don’t paint with melted plastic and false expectations of what love should be. no, paint with the rough edges of worn brush. let sloppy lines still form something so beautiful, something so great, that no god could ever being to imagine creating such a masterpiece.
6. tear it up. tear the painting. break the brushes. rip out the beauty. stomp it to scraps of red, orange, and yellow on the ground. kill all the love you ever thought you felt. cry.
7. don’t fall for the sun. don’t fall for her smile. don’t fall for every little thing she told you. don’t fall for the ethereal sketches. don’t fall for the messy paint and worn brushes. don’t fall for girls like her.
8. don’t love her more than you could ever love yourself. don’t love her at all.
9. walk away. god fucking damn it, you may be blind now, because all you can see is the pitch black of a broken heart. fuck this darkness. fuck the empty promises locked in soft laughs just past 2 am. fuck the idea that she would ever love a mere mortal like you. fuck you for falling in love with the sun. fuck you for thinking you wouldn’t get burned.
10. realize that you can’t let go. realize that despite the aching in your heart, she is still there in your mind, smiling brighter than you could ever imagine. realize that you are still so hopelessly in love with the girl you can never have.
11. learn to accept it. learn to hide the hurt as she dates a boy. learn to settle for just friends. fake it.
12. don’t try to draw her again.
13. do try to draw her again.
14. just never, ever, fall for her.
15. except, she’s pulling you closer with every step.
20. wait until your feelings for her have passed. only now can you draw her without crushing your brushes, destroying your canvas, throwing your paint. now, the colors aren’t as vibrant. painted in plastic smiles, the lines are smooth, clean. nothing like love at all.
you are no longer in love with her, you say.
again and again and again and again and again and again and-
but something in you still longs for that light.
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
gummygunk
origamiaround
kaledo-art
vaporwave
