There’s something sacred about the chaos of childhood the way it blurs the lines between joy and mischief, fear and courage. When I sat down with pen and acrylic, I didn’t plan to draw two kids. I didn’t plan anything at all.
But sometimes the hand knows what the heart can’t yet articulate.
What emerged from the paper was more than just a sketch. Two small figures barefoot, wild-eyed, caught between laughter and silence appeared like ghosts of a memory I didn’t know I still carried.
The lines I drew were deliberate, but the rhythm was reckless. I wasn’t just drawing their faces I was chasing something with every stroke. A moment. A feeling. A question. Maybe even an answer.
These kids… they could be anyone. A brother and sister running through sunburnt fields. Two best friends building secret kingdoms under staircases. Or maybe, just maybe they were me. Split in two. The one who watched, and the one who dared.
I used ink because it doesn’t allow mistakes. It records every twitch of hesitation, every burst of confidence. Acrylic because I needed to drown the stillness in color, to remind myself that childhood isn’t black and white it’s messy, loud, and painfully alive.
The chaos in the background was no accident. It wasn’t just texture; it was noise. The noise of growing up. Of not knowing what’s next. Of trying to be brave when you’re really just tired.
And yet, in their eyes, there’s peace. Maybe they know something we forget with age: that living is enough. That being seen truly seen is the only kind of legacy that matters.
This piece, for me, is a reminder that we all carry our younger selves like shadows. Not to escape them, but to remember who we were before the world taught us to hide.
Two kids. One moment. A lifetime captured in ink and color.
