A Year of Making Art, Day 118: Humor As a Prescription for Mental Health

August 15, 2007  Day 118

Mike and I did end up playing ping-pong and badminton yesterday afternoon, as well as attempting to make a video of my drawings.  I held the camera while he removed one drawing at a time on the stack.  The first few attempts were total failures, and then we did one we thought might work, but we couldn't upload it from the camera to the computer.  I need to learn more about making videos and manipulating them.

In this morning's drawing, I got heavily involved in color again, and it seemed that that was all it would be until I started adding some black lines.  I signed it and walked away, and then went back and filled in more color.  Later I added more black lines.  The next time I looked at it, I added some green.  And the last time, I filled in some areas with red.  Is it done now?

  Drawing #120  11" x 14"

We had our bipolar meeting last night, and it was really a lot of fun (the opposite of the last one, which was excruciatingly stressful).  Everyone had a horror story to tell, but we all laughed at ourselves.  Being able to see the humor in disaster is really important for mental health.  If we can laugh, even through our tears, we have a shot at making it.

(Note:  There is a gap between the dates I'm writing and posting because I had to give myself time to get ahead in case we travel and I'm not able to post.)