Finding Passion and Coming Home to Art Through ‘Arcane’

I don’t like watching TV. TV is too long, too extensive, too easy to fall behind on. It asks for too much, takes too much and gives too much all at the same time. Then, it ends. It leaves, years of attachment built, and the love for it stays with nowhere to go.

When I love a TV show, a book or a film, it carves its own place into my brain and sits there forevermore. With a movie, it’s a perfect container of time; you love it, it ends in two hours, you move on. With a TV show that truly touches me, its finale feels like a sort of abandonment. The space it created in my brain doesn’t leave, but its furniture is taken away. Its doors are boarded up, and I want back in.

When I watched “Arcane,” I didn’t expect it to become the obsession that it did. I hadn’t loved a TV show that much in so long. It quickly became one of my favorites, the more I dwelled on it. Watching it felt like watching a painting move, flinging itself across my laptop screen, making me cry more times than I could count.

I watched “Arcane” at a particular moment in my life, where everything had fallen apart and I was desperate to build it back up. All I knew was frustration and hopelessness. I would try to make things better, and I would fail. I was stuck in a depression that allowed me no reprieve.

Immediately, “Arcane” became that reprieve. It became an escape from everything wrong, and it turned out all I needed was an escape. Things fell into place. I was so much happier, because I had less time to bask in whatever horrors of emotion were popping up. That time was filled with connecting with these characters, dissecting them and making them beloved.

So when I finished “Arcane,” it was simple: if there wasn’t going to be more of the show, then I would create more of it on my own — a skill long kept hidden away but one that I’d never forgotten.

I was always an artistic child. I was the kid drawing anime girls in the margins of my notebook, begging my parents for new art supplies that I barely knew how to use but tried to make masterpieces out of nonetheless. Art occupied my everyday moments. Every scold from a teacher who thought I wasn’t paying attention in class while I drew merely rolled off of my back. I just wanted to make something. That felt most important.

But time passes and circumstances change. Drawing lost its spark. I was never good enough. I was more frustrated when I drew than happy. I dictated art as a phase, sold my art supplies, and organized old sketchbooks into drawers that would collect dust over the years.

But there would be days in which I would flip through those sketchbooks, laughing at the bad drawings or looking at the better ones and thinking, oh, I wasn’t as bad at this as I thought, was I?

Drawing was a thing I had, in recent years, been desperate to reconnect with. I tried to excavate the pieces, spending a few hours on a drawing that I was proud of, but it wouldn’t become a habit again. It was a one-off and nothing more.

For the first time, something let that change. I finished “Arcane” and I, as giddy as a child, cracked open those sketchbooks and took pencil to paper. Hours passed without me noticing. Everyday, after that, the same hours would be spent drawing the same “Arcane” characters, yet it never got old. 

I’m not the only person who fell back in love with art over “Arcane.” So many artists I see online recount similar experiences. Whether it be the beauty of the show’s animation, or the depth of its storytelling, something about it reignites some lost spark amongst old artists. Something about it creates a deep, intrinsic need to create something, and I answered its call.

I forgot how much I loved the sound a sketch makes. The slow process, the way the rough shapes turn into a figure with depth and character. The meticulousness. The smudges of graphite left on my fingers. The way it absorbs empty time like a vortex. Empty time, which I feared so much, which brought me the most of my misery, finally became something I looked forward to.

Now, each day, when I’ve finally cleared the swamp of homework and responsibility, I plug my cheap tablet into my laptop, open the free drawing program I downloaded a few months ago and I draw. It’s become a sacred part of my day, a ritual that I cherish. And finally, it feels like I’m home again.

There is a specific kind of joy that only comes with reconnecting with a hobby once lost. It’s a sort of excitement that feels like opening a gift on Christmas day. The slow realization that this wasn’t a one-off event, that drawing has become a part of my life once more, is a happiness I didn’t think I’d get. But even in the short amount of time I’ve indulged in art again, I can see it improving. It only makes me want to draw more.

It feels stupid and embarrassing that a cartoon could impact me so much. Something I started watching out of curiosity practically became a personality trait. But even though I cringe at myself, I can’t deny that the show led me to come home to art. 

“Arcane” opened a door that I had tried to pry open for years, and it made busting that door down look easy. It feels like I owe a debt to it.

But for now, I suppose I’ll repay that debt by drawing twin teal braids for the thousandth time. And as I repay the debt to “Arcane,” I repay the debt to myself, deprived too long of what makes me feel alive.