Whenever I meet someone new, enthusiastically exchange words and elegantly steer the conversation towards my new business – which does not happen as frequently as you would expect because I am a terrible introvert and hate to talk about myself – inevitably one question comes up: Why name it Water|Bear Illustrations? Often encasing another question: What is a water bear? 

Given that this business-name so often raises eyebrows and leads to the formation of tactible question marks above the head of my vis-a-vis, I have thought about changing it. However, my partner has raised a valuable point in this regard. Answering the whys gets me to talk about my business. (Did I already mention that I’m an introvert?) Thus, keeping it it is. 

Fortunately, both questions are relatively easy to answer. 

In case you don’t know it: a water bear – or more correctly a little water bear or tardigrade – is an ancient, tiny (microscopic) multi-celluar life form that is pretty much ubiquitous on this planet. It dwells in moss and moist surroundings – floating in the water entrapped by the moss and munching away on plant substrate. It is also durable AF – endowed with some serious superpowers. For example, it can be put in the freezer for a lengthy time period, thawn and still be viable. It will also not be impressed if you aim a raygun at it or alter the surrounding pressure. Heck, it can even survive in the vacuum of space. 

Now to the less interesting question: Why did I choose this crazy bug as my brand ambassador? Is it my spirit animal? Strange question! No. (This of course (!) is the red squirrel.) It just happened that the first drawing I ever posted on Instagram was a little water bear. Since I needed a name for the account to be able to upload anything in the first place, drawing_waterbears was the first thing that came to my mind. Since then I changed it to waterbear_illustrations but kept the tardigrade in the name because I simply got used to it.

Now you know the secret behind the name of my budding business, ripping away any reason to talk about it ever again :O