Loving to Solve Problems — like a Cat seeing a Ball of Wool

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
Duke Ellington

One of the peaks of working in Academia, and especially with students, are the problems to solve. Not personal ones — I’m not a therapist — but methodological ones. Finding out how to examine something, how to have the analytical basis for creative work. Finding out what they want to find out. Especially considering the downsides of Academia, that’s fun.

For me, it’s like a cat jumping on a ball of wool.

So, to capture that emotion somewhat, I did contact Ku Kuru Yo again and commissioned him to draw a suiting image. I did send him the following sketch (and yup, I can’t draw for shit):

My very rough sketch of what I imagined.

which was based on this thought, captured on a Post-It:

and this was the development process:

Ku Kuru Yo sketches/drawings and my feedback. a) His (much, much better looking sketch), b) my feedback, c) his updated sketch, d) me going for a composite, as the look was too much “muhahawa — I control the world with my ball of wool”, e) his colored version, f) his version after asking for clearer eyes, g) taking his sketch and, well, hopefully not defiling it, but making the eyes more easy to see and removing the circle (which is added again via a font style).

And yeah, it might be a “a very weird pose”, but I like it.

I already did order two T-Shirts on Zazzle. Curious how they will turn out.