Yes! Yes it’s close to my 100th Reflection and I myself can barely believe it.
I want to make the next part very special and look back on hw these started as well as a recap on my entire journey since writing these Journals but first, I’m featuring this year’s Eurofurence as pretty much the whole month culminated in that one week.
Okay not true, I forgot that at the very beginning of August, I went so see one of my fav Bands again: HEALTH and they were playing relatively close in Stuttgart, which was once more such a lovely concert, one that I still felt days after. I hope the chance I get, I can bring more time and potentially also a cool outfit… and preferrably not when it’s not so hot that I was dripping sweat in the end.
Alright, now featuring the weeks spent producing works for the Eurofurence Art Show:
In total, I had 8 pieces for auction: One was a digital print of Red Forest which was displayed at a small exhibition in Stuttgart which I have featured in part #97 along with the Roadtrip piece I did in the same month for the con book.
Another one was finished after Awoostria and have already mentioned it in last month’s reflection. So I had to finish 5 more in a bit more than 2 weeks and learn two new crafts in the meantime but more on that later.
Here, my excel schedule helped me a lot with time management, otherwise I would have lost track of what to tackle when. Two works were watercolor paintings as usual, but in the meantime, I have ordered my bachelor ingredients including sewing kits, acrylic paint and some varnish and I decided to give them a try while I was on the run so to say:
Doing a sculpt was early on my priority list, as I could not estimate how long it would take to dry (being my first larger sculpt). I used self-hardening clay that I got in Stuttgart before the concert. At first my plan was to make a pencil holder but quickly came to realize that it would’ve been too difficult for a first time project and that was a very wise decision. Instead, I took the idea further and came up with a glasses-holder and knowing my precious small birb fruits, I decided to turn one of my stickers into an actual sculpt! The process was fairly straight-forward: take a plastic box with roughly the same size and add paper and aluminium foil around it to give it structure, then I could just apply a layer of sculpt and add the faceparts gradually. The most fun part was to form the eyes and the brows as the clay was very smooth and the shapes flowy. I then let it dry 2 days. My biggest concern was that it was too unevenly thick at places, especially in the face and would produce cracks but luckily nothing like it happened, at least not until I lifted the plastic foil from the top where it was still relatively moist and thus dried unevenly. But these were just some minor cracks which were easily taken care of. I then could just start giving my acrylic paints a go and the first thing I noticed was that they behave different from watercolor in mixing. They’re much quicker to grey out which took some getting used to, but ultimately I enjoyed the process very much. After two sessions and some more waiting, I could apply varnish which then sat for a day more (notice why I wanted it to be the first project to work on?). I then nearly had a heart attack as some parts where the varnish dried were milky, especially at places where it sorta merged together. I couldn’t wait and hope for it to disappear so I painted over these few places where it’s now not to be seen. Certainly a worry I have about this particular varnish but with the next project, it should work out just fine…
Working on canvas had the immediate downside of being hard to sketch on, and naturally I need a sketch to base my colors on, so I had to place several folders underneath the canvas to have a stable fundament and decrease the risk of ripping the canvas. Finding the right composition also was not so easy but here making a digital proof of concept helped big time. Once it came to applying paint, the real fun began. I got to love acrylic, as with over half a year of watercolors working from light to dark restricting me, here, I could just let loose, freely mix colors, work on dark tones, then move on to light tones easily, it was a blessing! I also worked a lot with masking to let my brushstrokes stay loose and expressive and had to fear or any bleeding through the canvas. In the end, I was very proud of this piece, it’s a shame I was basically producing it to be given away but I’m happy to have made that decision so I can feel more secure of my future peices.
The final project I want to adress here is my very first sewing project, I’m talking of course about making my Blåhaj a T-shirt.
Oh my what a mess! Of course there are no sewing guides for how to make your blahaj a shirt, I had to engineer it all by my own (remember, my past level of sewing experience was to patch holes in pants). After hours of trying to wrap my head around where and how to start, I oriented myself on fursuit making (after all this is a test run for sewing my suit) and made a duct-tape dummy. Well not directly; to not damage my beloves Norman, I wrapped him up in newspaper and taped it together to then make a cutting pattern. From here on, things were less confusing. So I cut up a dress I have found and cleaned from a giveaway on the streets, and slowly and steadily sewed the parts together. It was labouring even with such a little piece but at least I had my ???-Audio books to keep me entertained and after 3 days, I had it very close to being finished. And – while I screwed up the collar – I think I did a pretty neat job. I definitely need to step-up my sweing work to make the stitches more unnoticeable but for a first time project, it was a great workout for what’s to come. But still, closer and closer up to the con, I would hope that I could take it home with me again as I kinda didn’t want anyone to pay for my shoddy work, but heck, it turned out selling for more than 3 times my intended price, which is bonkers! But now I surely know what to work on in the foreseeable future. I also want to thank Norman for being my model for the entirety of the Art Show.
Well then, it’s finally time to talk Con time!
I can say it was the best time I’ve had with a con probably ever. Not having to do Dealer’s Den and commissions was such a praise, I could finally go on panels again spend lots of time with peeps and meet new ones. Highlights for me where definitely the Charity Auction, the Vernissage and the Dance Competition and I still missed things like the Paw Pet Show, the single dances and the Closing Ceremony. The numbers were wild also. We were nearly 10k attendees, almost 3k more than last year and you could start to feel it. I don’t think the con needs to grow more than it already has while I’d welcome everyone who wants to add to the pile, but so much social interaction becomes exhausting after a while and by the time the last official con day was over, I was already yearning to return to my own 4 walls. For me, it had a somewhat bitter after taste though. I had a surge of thoughts entering my mind which I wrote down in my hotel room from 2 to 3 pm. And I want to show it here unfiltered and then give an addendum:
Eurofurence has always been a life-changing event for me; from the very beginning of my identity as a furry, deepening my connection with art to the possibility of making a living with it and holding the balance of work and enjoyment.
Going in to EF 2026 was altering my income from Dealer‘s Den (vending) to Art Show (Auction), in order to find out if it could be a suitable side-income. it is however now that I realize: it is much more than that.
It‘s something that has not left my mind for the past few hours, when we said our goodbyes and the question what cons I would go to next year have been answered with uncertainty. ‘I am afraid of the year to come’ – is my honest answer, not the one I would give. To the question of how my art show was doing I gave the honest answer: ‘that I was happy with the outcome as it was more than I had expected’. It is though then when I realized the crushing fact that even then, I did not get even with my expenses for the convention. As I remember my efforts going in for nearly a month prior to the convention, eating up pretty much all freetime that I had – barely felt gratified. And I mean that not in a way of dissatisfaction. I could not dream of ‚demanding more for my art‘ – I get what I get and that used to be my mantra for my work at cons. The truth however is that this is not a sustainable way of living. As it stands – even with good chances, I can barely support what gives me an outlook in life – connecting at furry cons – with the hobby that I‘ve grown dearly over the past decade. Even as I very well know, my skillset would increase gradually and therefore also the corresponding fruits of my labour, I‘m at a point in life where I must tragically come close to admitting defeat. And that is because there is now only one semester parting me from my entry into the job market and that brings me to a whole other topic and that‘s the outlook on my job possibilities. It‘s been on my mind since in the middle of my internship at the animation studio that I see barely any hope for me of working in the industry. Not in the long run at least. It is too brutal, unforgiving and honestly does not give off enough for me to be able to support my dear hobby and by far not the life that I would have been hoping for when I started my study 5 years ago. The world has changed too much, if it even had been a suitable one to begin with. It‘s not that I‘d say I‘ve made a bad decision‚ quite the contrary in fact – as studying media production helped me greatly pursuing my art and improving my socialization. I am, no doubt, a different man now than I have been in 2021, perhaps it is the biggest change in my personality that I ever saw looking back at these yearly steps in my life. Still, I don‘t deny it is a working branch that will likely not result in me leading a sustainable life. And it‘s why it poisons my mind with uncertainty. I‘m now at a state that I am just before I sent out the application to my university in 2019, With the difference that I‘m much better at subduing the threatening thoughts. But who knows if my walls will hold much longer. It is without a doubt my last barricade – the silence before the storm if you will – a fight for how my future will look like.
The European Union – just this wednesday – allowed a declaration which absolutely demolishes smaller businesses with an interest to sell goods within the Union. It crushed my faith in a fair and sustainable market everywhere I had hoped to live someday. As I see it, there‘s no other way than to look somewhere else for a way of income and a decent way of living – if decent is even on the plate. For the past few years I‘ve been decreasing my living standards, I needed to be looking for the cheapest goods, bite off my earnings for after my study and take disadvantages that would otherwise have helped me socialize more. So I learned to cherish not to seek value in money but of my small little joys. And a big part of that was to grow in the furry fandom. But for the near future this is a challenged part of my life as cons begin to get bigger and more expensive, I fret of being taken out of what helped me like nothing else to be a better person.
This monologue should however not be a terminating statement. If the past couple of years told me anything then it‘s that I take a branch if it comes into view. To climb this tree, I must grasp many branches and sometimes fall if I seek to get further. This will not change. As I said, I‘m devoted to going forward and I will not give up on working on my lifehood joy, my art my creativity and the joy these things can bring.
What this journal should convey is that I will not ever stop trying to be creative or seek a way to support myself through my craft but that I may be in situations where I will be impaired for a moment to hopefully get back to again after. I foretell such an impairment in the following year if things should not work out in my favor. But I will try my best, it‘s the only thing I can.
Ooof, what a bummer that guy, really. Let’s turn off the Moonlight Sonata and take a step back, shall we?
It is true that I do not have a secure job position or even a specific direction for next year and the time and money connected with a possible job will determine how far I can take things in the fandom next year, but my past sleep-deprived self made it sound much more gloomy than it really is. For one: cons are not so hard to make happen, even if I’d have to decide to visit one single con next year, I can almost certainly guarantee that I can make it work somehow. I’ll just have to take it as is and keep up my efforts to find something to provide me with my hobby and the fandom I’ve grown to soo closely in the past 4 years. But yeah, my plans of doing so in the animation or self-business area do not have a particularly fruitful look at the moment. I’ll still continue with my art as is; keeping it traditional, doing more acrylic pieces and sew more. To fulfill my dream of making my own Hawaiian shirts will hopefully not depend on how well I could make a living off of them.
And not to end on a too sour note, here’s me standing in front of the standee I designed, I hope you have seen and enjoyed it!
Have a very nice September and will be back to feature the 100th Reflection!
~ Souvillaine
