Steak Sealies

I remember one evening, back when I still lived in Japan, I went to downtown Ikebukuro with my siblings to see the aquarium. We arrived a little bit later than we intended since we kinda got lost trying to find the entrance despite knowing where it was. We eventually got up there, but by the time we arrived the place was well near closing time, much to our disappointment, as we all came to see the otters.

On the way out, there was a souvenir shop. Me, being the complete sucker I am for all things soft and floofy, found myself fawning over this white seal plush stacked with all the other marine animal plushes. The temptation to spend was too strong to resist, and before I regretted anything, I grabbed the seal, went to the counter, flashed the yens, and bought it for myself.

Back at the sharehouse, I was brainstorming ideas for what to name this new addition to my ever-growing collection of stuffed animals. At the same time, I was on a video call with my girlfriend, and I vividly recall telling her, "I need one that just resonates originality. Uniqueness. Something so well thought of and just quirky enough to be memorable."

A few days later, I was still at a loss of what to name it. It wasn't until I flipped up my phone and contemplated whether or not I wanted to head over to my school's nearest station to have steak for dinner, that I had the epiphany I needed. I looked at my girlfriend on Skype, and excitedly told her I knew exactly what to name it.

"I'm gonna call him Steak!"

My girlfriend was in sheer bewilderment. But I was already congratulating myself. I was just proud of myself for that burst of absurdity originality. I christened the stuffed seal as Steak, and Steak has lived with me and all my other plushies since.

On a more artsy note, I had something else in mind for this piece instead of these stacks of Steak plushies. I wanted to do a style similar to most of my digital paintings in recent days. Instead, I fiddled around with stuff I learned from this watercolor painting tutorial for Photoshop on Youtube (which I definitely recommend to all budding digital artists that want to hone their skills), and my mind just went on a tangent full of randomness, and well... Here we are. 😅

Also, it's weird looking at this image; it's purely digital, but the way it looks... It looks like a simple pencil sketch of a seal that got copied and pasted all over the canvas, and I just slapped it with a label saying "Hey, this is digital art, even though it looks suspiciously like something done merely in pencil." 🤔 Eh, whatever.