Adult colouring project

7:54am, 05th March 2016:

I've started a project to get me through this horror show. Eventually I'd like to publish a collection and have either a generous publisher send out the book to breast cancer patients undergoing the *tedious* treatment we must or self publish and have proceeds go to research.

The research is there, colouring is stress-relieving. But people keep giving me colouring books filled with either swear words or cats and I need to feel like I'm CREATING something. So I'm making art, unfinished art, that people can co-create rather than just be colouring in. Things you might want to take out and frame and not feel like you've wasted a few hours on sudoku… fun as that is (that wasn't sarcastic).

This is a preview of page one (at least, the page I've stated with), but I'm not sure where to go. I wanted to represent how I've been feeling every step of the way, but the explanations are probably too morbid to include in the book. Should I be honest and do that anyway or would that be too heavy for something recreational?

7:07am, 11th March 2016:

This one is going to need a re-draw, after 20 or so hours (concentration lacking like crazy) there are just parts I'm not satisfied with. Present in this one are the aloe flower, that has a wide range of meaning including both healing and grief. The clock probably isn't what is first assumed, oh yes, out of time, how morbid - but it very deliberately has no numbers, because it isn't about death, it's about uncertainty. I suppose if I were to sum it up in only a few words it would be the emotional chaos of changing perspectives and values after diagnosis.

Sorry for the tag, that's my new Instagram if anyone wants to follow or has one to connect there on. Help me identify you by commenting using pink emojis and I'll follow back. Again, this preview is only a fraction, I'm sure most artists can relate to having been plagiarized and profited from without compensation before.

More thoughts on distribution goals: My own cost covering would be great, it really would, but what I want is to get it to new patients before they start chemotherapy. I want it to be a free resource to help with the side-effect frustration that some women get, for the days they find they struggle to find the energy to even manage their hour of exercise and are too nauseated to stomach a computer screen. And to occupy that time during actual treatment that can just be spent waiting on results.
I'm also thinking maybe an arrangement where it could be published and available in stores, but the sales of one book buys a copy for a cancer patient then have that copy resource mailed-out the way BCNA do with information and leaflets in their pack.

I haven't really thought long and hard on it, I'm distracted by all the treatment decisions I'm trying to make. Never ending stress. Fortunately making this thing is helping with that. Chemo consult and genetic test coming up - wish I'd have the genetics done before the consult but I'm thinking angiolymphatic results even though it wasn't detected in lymph nodes is probably a good enough reason to go four rounds of chemical hell.