A Child’s Innocence

A child portrayed with Arteza colored pencil set on A4 cardboard paper.

When a child is born, we see that sweetness, cuteness, adorability, and particularly, that shimmering innocence, gushing off their aura; however, where does this innocence go as they come of age?

One could argue that a child’s innocence suffocates in the chokehold that peer pressure has on our schools and society. Another could argue that a child’s innocence dissipates in a disjointed family, where one parent’s state of mind is in Tokyo, and the other’s is in Kyoto, and well, it can be hard to refute this since charity, they say, begins at home.

Furthermore, others think it’s just “normal” for innocency to reduce as a child gets older, but statisticians beg to differ. For those fond of mathematics and statistics, you’d remember the Gaussian curves or “normal” curves that tend to start at a point, peak at the middle, and then regress towards the end. Well, comparing this to innocence and our lifespan, I feel our naivety is at its peak when we are children, but this reduces as our brain develops and learns more about the world from childhood to adulthood. However, as we age gracefully towards our seventies and eighties, we see our innocence tends to peak again, thence, completing the inversely normal curve, or should I say an “abnormal” curve, lol. Now, this is just my fun observation which can be true for most, but definitely not all.

Nonetheless, this thought on a child’s innocence fascinated and spurred me to make this portrait in color pencil, and to be honest, I truly enjoyed it after making most of my previous drawings in graphite. I cannot say if my subsequent drawings will be in color, but I can only relish the unpredictability of my artistic journey.

So, what do you think?

Cheemnonso