Tourette Syndrome and Mental Health Awareness

‘Courage, dear heart.’ ~ C.S. Lewis This art is meant to represent a feeling of what can go on inside a person with mental health struggles, the reason the individual is pictured nude is to represent the vulnerability of that struggle, the dragon represents the illness and the shield represents HOPE. There is hope and knowledge out there for those who need it, if you have any of these health concerns please know that you are not alone and that you should reach out to the available services; doctors, counsellors and people around you. You do not have to do it alone.

My son was diagnosed with TS at the age of 8 years old, he is now 17. Tourette Syndrome (TS) causes tics that are sudden, intermittent, repetitive, unpredictable, purposeless, nonrhythmic, involuntary movements or sounds. Tics can be either simple or complex. The most important thing to understand about the tics associated with Tourette Syndrome is they are the result of a neuropsychiatric condition. The sounds and behaviours are involuntary and are not being done by choice.

TS can often come with package of other syndromes, my son also has OCD, anxiety, ADHD and low level depression. While some medications are available to help with the symptoms they do not completely take them away and there is no cure. Since early childhood his daily life has been an ongoing battle, and yet, despite this hard journey he is growing into one of the most likeable, kind, and loving human beings I have ever known. 💗

When he was 15 years old he created the original cartoon pictured here as a way to describe what life was like for him on a daily basis. A monster lurking always attacking and ready to pounce on him the minute he woke up, the shield you see pictured at the end represents his family, counsellors, friends, and doctors who try to help him through. My son and I decided that we’d like to try to raise more awareness for people who, like him, suffer with real mental health concerns. In addition to this we also wanted to try to give back to an organization that works hard to support people with TS here in Canada, tourette.ca. Thus from Hunter’s cartoon I was inspired to create this painting which I am going to be adding to my shop in the beginning of June, it will be available as a print, bookmark and a sticker and all of the profit from the sale of these items will be donated to Tourette Canada. We hope you’ll consider supporting us through this endeavour by purchasing one of the items or even just joining us by sharing this story, painting and products with others.  

Charting Stars in Inktober

On Instagram there is an event called Inktober in which you follow a list of prompts for the month of October and do one ink drawing with each prompt per day. Well of course our Charting Stars character have made it into my Inktober series and I though it would be fun to share some of those here with you. Please keep in mind that you can follow along with our progress on a more regular basis via Facebook and Instagram!

News and More Charting Stars Concept Art

Morning friends! Excited to let you know our first book comes back from the editor today!!! That means that the graphic novel art sections now begin! Just to whet your appetite we plan to share the prologue with you for free as soon as it’s completed! Which should be fairly soon!!!
Attached are a few more concept illustrations of the Nine Realms characters – we hope you enjoy! 😀 If you’d like to see more art on a daily basis follow Whimsical on Instagram!

Educational Premise for Charting Stars

Once a homeschool Mom – always a homeschool Mom! My kids have been schooled at home all the way through, my daughter just graduated last year and my son is due to graduate next year. Education has been a daily focus in our home for nearly two decades! Our mission as a small family owned company is to produce engaging, thoughtful, quality books to enhance the lives of children. Part of enhancing their lives includes offering educational opportunities and in this series we’d like to focus on encouraging intermediate kids to read more.

How will we do this?

By using art and illustration to encourage the process. Kids love visuals – even older kids.

Charting Stars will be a graphic novel series but we are actually splitting it down the middle. That is, one page will be a full graphic novel format where kids can see the comic style panels, read the word bubbles and get the gist of the story. However, the corresponding page will be printed in regular novel format. The kids will get the gist of the story from the graphic section but if they want to learn more about the story, setting and characters they will need to read the corresponding text to do so. We are hopeful that this style of book will encourage those intermediate readers to take the plunge and delve more deeply.

we are so incredibly excited about this project and we can’t wait until you have the story in your hands – fall 2017 can’t quite come fast enough!