Unicorns and Me

     If you ask my what my favorite animal is I will likely respond with "Do fictional animals count?" because my favorite animal is the unicorn. 

                                    
     When my parents were having troubles and almost got divorced (spoiler alert: they cleaned up their act and got back together in the end, but I still had to deal with being used as a weapon and a crutch by both sides for six years), I had a stuffed unicorn named Sparkles. She was probably my best and only friend at the time, and she helped me cope with all that stress and all the family fights in which I refused to take sides. 

     In junior high school and high school, I read up on old legends about unicorns. I read that unicorns can purify water with their magical horns, jump higher than horses or deer, and they have healing powers. Unicorns had become a real inspiration to me. 

     Needless to say, I became pretty good at drawing unicorns. The unicorn became my symbol in highschool and everyone knew me as the unicorn girl because I drew things like this. 





     It didn't do much for the teachers though. My art teachers wanted me to draw people. It was a pain in the hindquarters! I'd draw it, they'd tell me I needed improvement, I drew it better, they gave me more negative "constructive" critisizm, and no matter what I did it was never good enough, it always needed to be improved in some way. Everyone else liked my unicorns, but the art teachers didn't seem to care for animals. They wanted me to think outside the box, but they kept throwing me in different boxes. 
  So I started cheating them and drawing unicorn caricatures, or people how they'd look as unicorns.
     Since I left school I've gotten better at drawing people, probably because I found some passion and inspiration in Star Wars by then. Anyway here's some unicorn caricatures, if anybody has a request for a unicorn just let me know. I'm open to suggestions. 

     Here's Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games


     Shinya (an OC by Dream-Shade ) 


     Ahsoka Tano from Star Wars the Clone Wars


Luke Skywalker


Harry Potter, and Ron and Hermione


Leonard Nimoy (rest in peace)


My neighbor, Joey.


     Anna and Elsa from Frozen


     The more I drew, and the more I liked to draw, the better I got. Soon I was making sea unicorns, African unicorns, and the elusive unigriff.







     My unicorns weren't always light and fun. I did slip and fall to the dark side before I moved to New England. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow it casts. Here are a few shadows.





     These are both self portraits. I could not begin to discribe the suffering I faced in those times. According to some legends, only those who are pure of heart and innocent can see unicorns. Other legends say that when you lose your innocence like I did by experianceing the painful truths of life, the magic will end for you. 

     Well, I may have fallen in the dirt but I still managed to clean myself off. No matter how many times my Aunt Ann tries to make me out to be the villain or violated my basic human rights because I disagree with her, no matter how many times my mother brings up the past, or how badly I miss California. I can still clean my wounds and heal them.

     Every scar tells a story of how I survived, and I survive because unicorns were, and still are a part of my life. Their magic has never left me.