During my freshman and sophomore years at college, I had a lot of time to myself, mostly because I was too paralyzingly shy to integrate myself into other groups.

I was a quick study and had a lot of time to kill those first two years. I was also dirt-poor. What little cash I had went to fantasy paperbacks, and then in a fit of curiosity, to a pack of Bristol board and a pile of colored pencils from the school store’s art section.

They weren’t cheap, but they resonated with me in a way I can’t explain. When the loneliness or the nightmares plagued me too many nights in a row, I would huddle in a candle-lit dorm room and fill pages with richly colored figures blending into vague backgrounds from my dreams.

Most of my pencils are gone now, used up long ago, and I have yet to find quality replacements. (Most boxed sets of colored pencils are missing a smooth texture, depth of color, and a soul.)

But when I launch Brushes on my iPhone or iPad, I find my pencils again, in the form of digital ink.

My art will never hang in a museum. I make it neither for the tourist nor the consumer. I didn’t make it for you or anyone like you. I don’t even make it for the end result. I make it as a record of how I felt when I huddled over the canvas and stared into the empty page.

Thank you for looking at it anyway. I hope it inspires you to find a way to capture your feelings, if only for a moment, if only to make them real.