“John Soap QuackTavish” was a painting that took me about 6 days to make. When it was complete, I was pleased with its result, happy it was finally finished. Naturally, I didn’t think it would reach stellar statistics on social media when it was posted on my Instagram and Tiktok accounts. Two days after posting it, however, something amazing happened.
Neil Ellice, the official voice actor this painting was based on actually saw my painting! As soon as I saw the comment on Tiktok, my heart started racing. I was in absolute disbelief that he had actually seen it, let alone acknowledged it at all! The feeling of excitement had me in tears over how happy I was in that moment. The day after commenting on Tiktok, my painting was featured on his Instagram story.
This was the sort of motivation I really needed to keep going. The feeling of excitement, the acknowledgement by someone who’s extremely successful and well known for what they do, and considering he’s someone I highly admire, it really gave me a sense of motivation that I’m going to hold onto very tightly! During the process of making this painting, I found myself in another deep hole that I had dug for myself, thinking about my failure more than my success.
The occasional negative headspace is tricky to avoid, let alone climb out of whenever I find myself stuck in it. However, it’s moments like these that remind me that I need to be a little nicer to myself and take it slow and steady. Success doesn’t show up over night, and comparing one’s self to others is never going to help raise success, either. Thank you, Neil. Thank you so much!
