I’d like to get the dust off this blog by sharing my best friend’s (Emma’s) drawings of me.
Emma has been in my life for about 10 years now – she was a friend of a high school friend at the time, and, without having met her IRL, we planned a surprise birthday shenanigan for this friend of ours.
We’ve been inseparable ever since.
We share a love for Asian dramas, Korean food, and sarcasm and self-deprecating jokes as a means to deal with our respective traumas, and it’s always an honour to be portrayed by her.
She’s one of the biggest loves of my life and I’m so grateful that she’s allowed me to see who I am through her eyes. It helps me keep my self-deprecating mental comments at bay.
I think the first time she did an artwork of me was in March/2018, based on a photo of mine at a café in The Hague.
About a year later, I got a long bob type of haircut and sent her a selfie the second I saw the result. She’s always supported the idea of me cutting my hair short and whatever tiny step towards that (ie cutting to MEDIUM length) is celebrated.
I was streaming on Caffeine and Twitch at the time, so she took an artwork and added gaming consoles to its background. Needless to say, I posted it everywhere.
I rather enjoyed our year-of-living-in-the-same-city. I missed her. For most of our years of friendship, we’ve been thousands of miles apart… When I was in Taiwan, she was in Brazil, then I came back, she moved to Korea, then she came back, I went to Europe, then I came back and we had a year before I moved to São Paulo… But she’s one of the most present people in my life.
A nice surprise I had was at her ‘art uni final exhibit for graduation’ thingy – there were sketches of me ALL OVER THE WALL.
Many of them were based on photos she took of me when we were hanging out or at art exhibits. She even did a wallpaper of me + my doggo (rip) + bunbun.
Emma has a versatile artistic skill set, but mostly works with digital illustrations. I’ve even commissioned her to create emotes for my Twitch channel (which I’ve abandoned since the pandemic started).
My only sketch, profile, of Heaven is a large blue sky, and larger than the biggest I have seen in June – and in it are my friends – every one of them.
Emily Dickinson
A few months ago, when I was having a hard time, she sent me the “I wish I could see yourself the way I see you” drawing (bottom right corner in the collage). It’s my favourite one!
One of my struggles is feeling like “omg I don’t know how to pay it back”, but friendships aren’t like that, right? I mean, I gift people because I want to, not because I expect anything in return, so I’m trying to keep that mindset on when its my friends gifting me instead xD
Anyways. I just wanted to share her amazing skills with y’all.
~xoxo
ps.: Love you, Emma!