Worth the Ink?

a meditation on choosing and perfectionism

dim sum sketch from New Year’s

I’m standing in front of my fridge at 7 pm, stomach eating itself. Pizza or salad, noodles, sushi, soup. The decision branches multiply — nutritional value versus affordability versus that hormone-driven craving screaming somewhere below my ribs, the kind that makes me want to eat an entire rotisserie chicken with my bare hands in the dark.

Perhaps I could make a cost-benefit table. Except now there are more factors, and suddenly I’m back in the crotch of Plath’s fig tree, watching my dinner options wrinkle and rot while my stomach folds in on itself like a dying star.

There’s something sacred about using ink to capture a moment. That specific combination of light and shadow that’ll never quite arrange itself that way again. Drawing is one of the few things I do for no reason except that I want to. I’d never actually tried pen until this year. Digital, pencil, anything with an undo button, anything that lets me take back my mistakes, is what I default to. Then: black pen. Partly because of convenience and accessibility, partly because there are only two values. Light and dark. I can try to fake that medium tone with thinner lines, but it’s not the same.

So I choose. I pick what matters most in the scene and let everything else blur.

Old me would have tried to draw every last leaf. I’d try to capture every bump in the branches, every bud and flower, obsessively rendering until my hand cramped and the tree stopped looking like a tree. (Ever stare at a word so long you forget how it’s spelled?) I’ve learned that when there’s only black and white, too many details scatter the focus across the page. 太散了, my art teacher would have said, his voice sharp as the pen point. Too dispersed. Don’t lose the forest for the trees.

Now I squint. I hunt for the darkest darks, the shadows that pool like spilled ink. I break down images into shapes. A few leaves scattered here and there, three strokes, five strokes, and the viewer’s mind fills in the gaps, assumes the whole dark mass is foliage. 抓大放小 — hold the bigger picture, release the smaller details. Let them fall like figs plopping to the ground.

Proportions used to paralyze me. Now I eyeball them. I use the sketch itself as a reference, compare angles, let one line inform the next like dominoes falling in slow motion. Negative space guides the way. The real world moves at thousands of frames per second, infinite colors bleeding into infinite shadows. It’s impossible to capture that — I’d go insane trying, like trying to remember every dream I’ve ever had. I just want to convey how I saw it. Seize the ghost of the feeling and filter the residue of the moment through my eyes and hands. Make fast decisions. Instantaneous ones about each line, where to commit ink and where to hold back.

And here’s the thing about pen: once you set down a line, it’s there. Permanent as a scar. Spend forever deciding, and nothing gets drawn; the page stays white, pristine, useless. I know that in principle. But the perfectionist in me is a fly I can’t swat away. It lands on every line, picks at every mark. I’ve learned to trap it under glass. It still taps the surface, still mouths the word wrong, but it can’t touch the ink anymore. Pen teaches me to draw over it, through it, around it, incorporate the error. Make it part of the art. There’s no right or wrong anyway, just what exists, what I’ve chosen to make real.

My life works like this too. I still love mapping out possibilities, considering variables internal and external, constructing elaborate decision trees in my head that branch and branch until I can’t tell the difference between thinking and spiraling. But no matter how extensively I evaluate the options, I have to choose, claim a fig. And choosing means responsibility. Fall and there’s no undo button for gravity. You’re responsible for what you do. And after you decide, does it even count as a decision if you don’t follow through? You must move forward. What if you regret it, what if you chose wrong, what if the other figs were sweeter, what if— I could keep going. But the pen’s already down.

No regrets. Every decision, every memory, every event, whether in or out of my control, has molded me into the person I am. Some of my edges are sharper, honed by stone and suffering. Others are smoothly rounded by the current of time.

The pen hits the paper and the line exists, final as death. Another moment captured, another fig chosen and bitten into, juice running down my chin. The frames flicker past at thousands per second. But I’m still here. Alive in this unrepeatable moment that I’ve decided is worth the ink.

Royce Hall at UCLA is so gorgeous…this required so much patience

trying live sketching at coffee shop near me