Lost Boys And My Inspirations - A Painting Series

"He sprinkled me in pixie dust and told me to believe
Believe in him and believe in me
Together we will fly away in a cloud of green
To your beautiful destiny
As we soared above the town that never loved me
I realized I finally had a family
Soon enough we reached Neverland
Peacefully my feet hit the sand
And ever since that day...
I am a lost boy from Neverland..." ~ Lost Boy, Ruth B

This beautiful song by Ruth B inspired my latest painting series which I named, Lost Boys. The combination of Ruth B's beautiful voice, the haunting melody, and the sad lyrics inspired me on so many levels. Whether we realize it or not we are all "lost boys". There must be at least once in our lives we don't feel loved or accepted. Maybe we don't really feel it much as adults because we have the ability to manage our emotions but not so with children.

Nothing is more damaging to children's mental and emotional being than rejection and abandonment from their own parents. If the people who are supposed to care for and love them reject them outright, how and where do they get their basic emotional needs met?

I have been blessed to attend a parenting workshop called Good Enough Parenting a couple of times in the past. This workshop was conducted by the founders of Movie Therapy, John and Karen Louis. John is a certified Schema Therapist and was trained by the founder of Schema Therapy, Dr. Jeffrey Young, while Karen is a Master Solution Focused Practitioner.

This workshop taught me that in order to raise mentally and emotionally healthy children, parents need to meet their children's core emotional needs which are...

connection and acceptance
healthy autonomy
reasonable limits
realistic expectations

If these four needs are not being met adequately in children, they would feel frustrated and prolong disappointment and frustration would eventually lead to the development of "schemas", or cognitions and emotions stored deep within our minds that are triggered when we encountered similar situations later in life. In short, unmet core emotional needs in children would lead to various behavioral issues in the future.

This workshop taught me a lot not just about being a 'good enough parent' (there are no perfect parents), but also taught me about myself. It gave me insights into why I react to certain situations in a certain way, why certain people's attitude angers me and so on. This realization about myself that I had no idea about in the past, forced me to face uncomfortable things about myself. At times during the workshop, I teared up because it was painful to acknowledge the emotional pains I had to endure as a child.

It was a healing journey indeed and I felt like a 'lost boy' who had been found.

I would talk more about what I learned in this workshop in my future posts. Now let's talk a bit about this painting. The boy in this painting is actually my son. I decided to use his portrait because I just love the look in his eyes. It is purely innocent and full of trust. It begs to be loved and accepted. And the colorful background signifies the endless possibilities in his young life. He is not a 'lost boy' yet and his soul is still pure and trusting. His parents are his anchors in his young world and he loves them unconditionally despite their flaws.

I used a paper stencil to draw the portrait and the background was painted in watercolors and black markers.

The progress photos are shown below:

Painting the background in watercolors. I chose four basic colors - blue, green, red and yellow.

The original image was digitally processed to create this stencil. I usually just cut the main details like his head and body shape and hand drawn the smaller details like his singlet, nose and shadows.