Unexpected Encounter

Guys, I'm gonna split this into sections. If you don't want to or can't read it all, skip to the third bit and it's all good.

1 - The Story

I went to an anime convention here in the small town I'm living in. It happened a few days ago, and it was a bit underwhelming due to being so small and having little to no publicity work to let people know about it. Yet, amidst the stands and the few people attending, I found a relatively big artist here by the name of Daniel da Rosa, who came here from São Paulo for god knows what reason - like I said, small town, even smaller event - and he was reviewing this young artist's portfolio.

I was alone at the convention and had been feeling down like I mentioned before, so I just stopped and listened to the conversation. To my absolute amazement and confusion, I ended up talking to them for over an hour about my art as well as the process of making a living with creating what you love. It was... Well, frankly, it was what kickstarted my healing from the way I was feeling.

From this conversation, I started to realize I had to take care of my mental health even if that meant slowing down my creative process and projects. And that was great, but then came the next unexpected bit. The artist kinda "followed" me around for a bit? Stalked is a strange word, but she was nice so I approached her and we talked.

She's young, barely 20, and she's from a small town - I mean even smaller than mine, survives basically on beach tourism - and she's slightly autistic but very passionate about art. She told me she dreams of being able to make a living out of her craft, and so we talked a lot about that and other stuff.

Over the past few days, I've kinda taken her - I can't believe I'm saying this - as a sort of apprentice? Not in the literal sense, her art is already super cool and she's got a lot of talent AND she's dedicated, which are the two core traits I believe you need to push through a lot of the barriers in visual arts. But now comes what I mentioned on discord about this post:

2 - The Issue

This artist is from a poor family that was forced to move from their home after the floods of last year that some of you might remember me mentioning and even donating and helping around a bunch during that period in May. They lost a lot, including her already old laptop, and she has basically no way of doing digital drawings - which, to me, makes it all the more inspiring that she learned how to use watercolor at such an astonishingly fast pace! - and she struggles to find commissions outside of a friend of hers and a friend of her mother.

Thing is, I guess I'm feeling a bit... compelled? I think that could be a word for it - Compelled to help her. She's such a nice person and she lost one of the most important tools she could have to develop not just her art, but a sense of community and a larger following.

So for the past 3 days I can't get this idea - not even an idea, more of a feeling - out of my head that I need to at least try to do something about that. And that's what this is all about.

3 - Ideas

So, basically, what I want to do is help this artist to get either a laptop or a drawing tablet. I've searched for a few options - mostly secondhand stuff - and I found some that would fit. Now, I know I can spare at max around 150 USD out of my savings to buy her something, and that could be enough, but I don't know because buying secondhand is always a bit of a risk.

And that's when I had this thought of asking you guys if you could help me help her. NOT FOR FREE, I don't like asking for charity out of a bit of pride bust mostly because I'd much rather give something back to anyone who helps me.

So I compiled a few ideas into this poll, and I'd really appreciate if you guys could vote on what you'd feel you could invest any amount of money into. Any and all proceeds from whatever I end up doing will go to buying her either the laptop or the drawing pad (I'll obviously post everything so there is no room for suspicion or doubt), and by this poll I'll decide what I'll try to buy, how much I'll have available to spend and if I'll be able to buy a new or a secondhand gift.

Thank you all for being here, thanks for reading and even if you can't help here, I appreciate you all the same and hope you have a great new year!

P.S.: She doesn't know I'm doing this, so I don't want to share her socials yet. But if we pull this off, I'll check with her if she'd be open to letting me share her pages.s.