Confidence Building: Dreaming Big

This post has been sitting in my drafts since November of last year. My confidence was at an all time low and I was feeling really sorry for myself, so I started writing about dreams. One of the bigger dreams was to work with Guillermo Del Toro, even if it was for a small project, even if it was just an illustration. The entire post was going to be centered around that. 

I have mentioned him in the past, but he is one of my biggest inspirations and has been for a very long time. He is also one of my only living inspirations, as most of them are long dead. I was a teenager when I watched 'The Devil's Backbone' and ever since then I have turned to Del Toro and his haunting imagination to help inspire my work. The way he makes horror seem beautiful, his love of vintage, the color palettes he uses and how his films play out like old storybooks. We have so much in common artistically, and I think that is a lot of why I look up to him. He makes me feel less weird for being fascinated by the morbid and macabre, and wanting to create a whole story based on those concepts.

So when the 'visible women' tag was going around on twitter a few weeks ago, I almost didn't participate. I have done several of those kinds of tags in the past, but nothing really ever came of it. I always thought, 'maybe my work isn't eye-catching enough yet' and came away a little wounded but determined to keep improving no matter what. That was part of why I was wary to try again, but I knew there was no harm in it and so I did. 

I put my post together that morning, and throughout the day it steadily grew. I am so thankful to everyone that shared it around, and I gained a lot of new followers! That alone was worth it. 

Then later that night something happened. 

I saw a mutual artist friend of mine mentioned that Guillermo Del Toro had reblogged her post! Holy shit. Out of curiosity I went to his twitter to look, and as I was scrolling through the reblogs I see...

And immediately burst into tears. A person I greatly admire saw my work, and my characters.  Whatever he thought of my art was enough to reblog it, and to him that was probably such a small gesture, but to me it means everything. I will be thinking about this for years, and maybe one day I can thank him for it in person. 

Which brings me back to that big dream of working with him, or even having him buy/commission a piece from me. What are the odds that of all people, it was Guillermo that saw my art? That alone seemed like a dream, and it actually happened. Walking around his museum exhibit years ago, picturing my own characters as I look at all of his, never once did I imagine he would somehow look at mine one day. What a strange, funny world we live in.

But is that my only dream? Of course not, but it is a dream I hold very dear and it used to feel like an impossibility. I will keep improving to get closer to it, and maybe that impossibility will come true too. Even if it doesn't, this was enough.

Thank you, Mr. Del Toro.  Gracias por todo.