A new quest appears

Hey all,

I’ve set out to finally tackle one of the biggest things that’s been holding me back: working on an actual project, including a set story and the framework that brings.
I picked The velveteen rabbit to create illustrations for. I have an external deadline for it (I want to submit it to a contest) which means I have better chances of staying focused on it and I have a few friends, holding me accountable as well.  The submission deadline is the end of August and there has to be 2-10 illustrations submitted to the same story.

I’m generally on a roller-coaster with my life with the ups and downs of ” I love everyone and everything I contribute to” and “I should get my priorities straight and schedule in more time for creating art and starting a business on that field”. So knowing that I don’t dedicate enough time for art these day I’m aiming for submitting 2 finished illustrations, but I want to plan out more. In fact I now think that I want to plan out the whole story and pick story moments that I want to illustrate first, but go on with the whole thing and either plan it out in a way that I could pick it up and finish it anytime later if I wanted, or just go on with it and finish it anyway. We’ll see what happens. For now, I’m just going to keep my head down and keep working.

And while working on this, I’m going to keep a log of the process and share that here. Fingers crossed, I manage to stick to both of those quests. 🙂

Srough pencil sketch of a bunny plushyo as I said, the story I choose is The velveteen rabbit which is a short and sweet story of a toy bunny. You can read it online here.

It’s a story I’ve first read this month, but I’ve seen a quote from it numerous times before so it was kind of on my to read list for awhile now. If I knew it was so short and available online, I probably would have read it years ago. I didn’t care to check before.
Anyway, I’m going to now end with the lines that I’ve seen circling around, to give You a push to read it. 🙂

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

And the bunny you can see here on the side is the very first sketch I made, when I decided to settle on this story. There is more to come! 😉

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