How a Lost Donkey in Greece Inspired My Funniest Illustration
Sometimes the best art comes from the most frustrating moments. This is one of those stories.
Some art is born from a flash of inspiration, and some is born from a plan. This piece, however, was born from a family vacation, a heartbroken kid, and an €8 stuffed animal with googly eyes.
This is the story of my "Smart Ass" illustration.
Last summer, my daughter and I were in Santorini, Greece. If you've ever been, you know that donkeys are everywhere—live ones trotting by, statues on corners, and pictures in every shop. It was in one of these little shops that my daughter, after an inordinate amount of time sifting through a basket of plush toys, found the one.
It was a ridiculous-looking donkey. One of its eyeballs had been glued on upside down, giving it a permanently bewildered expression. She fell in love, bought it with her own money, and it became her most prized possession of the trip.
In my post a few weeks back I talked about how I kept an illustrated journal during this trip, and the funny little donkey with the crazy eyes made its way into the journal. It's a good thing it did.
A few days later, on the frantic trip to the airport, the donkey was lost.
The tears were immediate and epic. The loss of this tiny memento was a genuine heartbreak. What followed was a whole saga: I called the hotel that booked our taxi. They called the taxi driver. Miraculously, the donkey was in the car! But he couldn't get back to the airport in time before our flight. We even debated having this silly €8 toy shipped to us in Canada for €40—a price my daughter was willing to pay out of her own savings, she was that devastated.
In the end, we had to leave it behind. A genuinely sad and frustrating end to an otherwise awesome vacation.
But because I had that drawing in my journal, we still had a perfect memory of what he looked like.
Separate from all this, a completely different idea had been rattling around in my head. As a former engineer, I'm a sucker for anything related to science and technology—I love finding smart people and learning from them, which naturally extends to a love for "nerd humor."
Now, before we go any further, you should also know that I am an exceptionally sarcastic person, so I am no stranger to being called a smart ass. Frankly, I've always found it to be a bit of a compliment. A smart ass is typically a quick thinker who points out the seemingly obvious thing that others missed. And besides, I’d much rather be a smart ass than a dumb ass!
This got me thinking: what if I created a literal interpretation of the phrase—not a sassy person, but a genuinely intelligent animal. A smart ass.
And I knew just the ass for the job. I would take my illustration of the lost donkey, this source of so much heartbreak, and upcycle the memory. I would turn it into art.
Looking at the finished piece now, it represents something I truly believe: life is a mosaic of good and bad moments, and the way we remember things has as much to do with our attitude as the event itself.
We could have chosen to let the lost donkey be a sad memory. Instead, we turned it into this. We took the heartbreak and the stress and the tears, and we made something joyful. And now, when we think of that donkey with the crazy eyes, we don't feel sad. We just smile.
I'd love to hear from you in the comments:
Tell me about a memory that always makes you smile, but has a surprisingly dramatic story attached to it.