@opheliafu's Doodle Doodledayeo Round 12 | Insights and Inspiration from The Little Prince

It's my second time to join in @opheliafu's Doodle Doodledayeo challenge and I have to say, I am enjoying making these doodles. It was really fun making it with @maimaimaichan and @yenn in the middle of the afternoon. We had fun brainstorming on ideas (and snacking of course. Can't doodle on an empty stomach)

Click here for @opheliafu's full posts. This round, participants were tasked to make a doodle with the following words:

• Star
• Sheep
• Town

I saw that the three words were associated with Christmas season. However, I also found something rather familiar about the words. All three were found in one of my favorite books of all time! So I grabbed my pen and paper and began drawing:

To those who are familiar with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, you can see how my art style is inspired by the children's book. I also made sure to include all the familiar characters and objects:

• There's The Little Prince looking innocently at the sky
• The Rose whom the Prince loves so much is just beside him with the glass covering on. Just goes to show how much love he has for his rose.
• You can see the three sheep that he asked the pilot to draw
• The Baobab sprouting at the center of the planet (hope it doesn't grow though)
• The King, the Lamplighter, the Conceited Man, the Businessman, and the Geographer
• The planet's little volcano, the airplane, the stars and, the planets

Drawing this was very nostalgic! I was brought back to my younger days and how The Little Prince taught me so much about life. This children's book is so full of deep meanings and innuendos of the absurdity of the adult life.

The Little Prince and The Rose's Love

This book is a story of a young prince from Asteroid B-612. He spends most of his time uprooting Baobabs, and making sure it doesn't grow enough to devour the entire planet. Baobabs are planet-eating trees, notoriously enormous, whose roots could split the prince’s tiny planet into pieces. He needs to do this much more since his home is rather small (being possible to see forty-four sunsets in one sitting!) and only comprises him and a small volcano (plus the occasional Baobabs that needs uprooting). The little prince notes that one must be very careful to take care of one’s planet. Since all planets have good plants and bad plants, one must remain vigilant and disciplined, uprooting the bad plants as soon as they start to grow

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However one day, a beautiful rose emerged from the ground. He was rather surprised to see a new kind of plant in his planet. It surely wasn't a Baobab. In fact, it was such a beautiful thing yet so fragile in nature, even demanding care and attention from the Little Prince. He decided to take care of the Rose, even if she told him a minor lie. This made him rather upset which is why he decided to leave the planet. This is where he has the chance to meet the King, the Lamplighter, the Conceited Man, the Businessman, and the Geographer.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

This book teaches us to look beyond what our senses can perceive. That love is too complex only to be gauged by our eyes. He loved the Rose so much but looked at the Rose' words instead of her deeds. When The Little Prince set course to Earth, he saw a million other roses! He truly missed the Rose. However, it was a different feeling, all of them weren't his Rose. That was when he knew that she was different, that despite having a million stars in the sky, only his Rose would ever really light up his world. That's true love.

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The Importance of Drawing (Art, Imagination, Creativity)

This book implies how important it is to exercise our imagination. The Little Prince has a lot of drawings which emphasizes how extremely vital it is to use our creativity to really grasp the idea of the story. It teaches us to think like children, to see the significance of art in our lives.

A Pilot who crashed into Earth saw the Little Prince alone in the desert. It was unnatural to see a child all alone in an inhabitable landscape. Oddly enough, his first words were, "Please draw me a sheep". The Pilot was perplexed and confused. He used to love drawing but the adult world killed his love of doodles. He used to draw an elephant inside a boa constrcitor but most adults only saw a hat. He was rather disappointed. For the pilot, being imaginative was the way to live but the grown-up world did not approve of that.

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With his drawing skills a little rusty, the Pilot began to draw sheep after sheep with each one the Little Prince would disapprove of, noting how each one looks rather ugly, fat, sickly or thin. Then the pilot used his imagination and began to draw a box with three holes, saying, "here's your sheep". The Little Prince was surprised, "That's perfect. The sheep is inside!"

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We can learn a lot from this story. We should always have a place for art, imagination and a little creativity in our lives. The things we concern ourselves with are trivial, much like how adults from the story concern themselves with. Truly, what matters most is invisible to the naked eye.

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I hope you have the chance to read The Little Prince. I assure you. It is such an interesting read. I'm considering making a full writeup on the Little Prince since I love the book so much. Again, thanks to @opheliafu for the opportunity. This made me rekindle my love of art and of literature. Wow!

Happy Holidays everyone!