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Christmas Break is almost here, meaning it’ll soon be time to kick back, relax, and get bored.  Of course, there’s still plenty I have to do, but it’s also good to find things I want to do, and I came across such a thing the other day while doing some of the old reminiscing.

It all stems from an encounter I had at the Prague Zoo this past summer with a polar bear who found himself happily entertaining a crowd.  This bear had a rocky pen with a pool of cool water all to himself, and he was spending his time swimming from his rocky bank towards the edge of the glass wall, coming up for breath, and returning to the edge on his back with his paw on his belly, just as happy as he could be.  There was something totally entrancing about the whole process, the languid way he slipped under the surface, the triumphant way he reared back up with his nose in the air, and the cool, almost cheeky way he backpedaled away with his paw on his belly and a big, old smile on his face.

I was not the only one enthralled by this little water dance.  There was a Czech family gathered around the edge of the glass all grinning along with me, and in that huddle stood a little blonde girl, no more than four-years-old, with her face pressed up against the glass, laughing and carrying on as the bear swam straight up to her and reared up again and again, like a big dog trotting up to its master and bucking up for a pat on the head.  Watching this little tiny little girl totally falling in love with this massive, majestic, yet playful beast, all facilitated by the rolling water and mediated by a thick yet scrubbed-clean glass was, needless to say, one of the highlights of my trip, and a moment of strange magic that has stuck with me since then.

And so to the present-day, where I have decided to expand this into a little story, complete with (albeit amateurish) illustrations.  The story will center on the character of the little girl, here christened Little Anya, a six-year-old in Prague with a general distaste for anything big, including bears.  She, like the little girl she is based on, will have a transformative experience with the great beast (named Pavel, of course, Pavel the Polar Bear), only this time it will be an even deeper revelation, a moment in which Little Anya will realize that the world is marvelous precisely because it is so big – unlike poor Pavel’s world, which is, of course, pathetically small.  It’s a children’s story, obviously, which will be entirely new territory for me, but this is exactly what I like about the project.  Not only will I be forced to write for an audience I never write for, I will also get to return to some of my drawing/painting habits of the past.  I can’t imagine there being much hope of it extending beyond this blog, but perhaps that shouldn’t be the point at all; this is a chance to stretch and to create completely for pleasure.

A NOTE ON LITTLE ANYA: This painting took a while to come by, but it may not end up being her exact look (it’s colorful, to say the least, perhaps too colorful).  If nothing else, it’s a start.  I should also give a little shout out to Hey Arnold! and Calving and Hobbes, two sources that have clearly influenced my drawing.