8/7 – 10/7/24

Monthly illustration roundup for 8/7 to 10/7, 2024

Hi everyone! I took a vacation hiatus for the last month, but I am back! This newsletter will be brief since I’m waiting on some commissioned pieces to be published and I went through a frustrating spell of creative’s block. In predictable fashion, the piece that broke me free is large and detailed, and will take at least a month to complete. I’m not complaining—I feel electric and full of gratitude to be creating again—but why can it never be a small idea that just takes a week to complete?

ART

This piece was commissioned by Black Alumni of Dartmouth Association to commemorate their Fourth Annual Dartmouth reunion on Martha’s Vineyard. It was given away to all participants. This illustration is easily one of my favorites I’ve ever made. I had so much fun experimenting with light, overlays, and soft-edged brushes to achieve the look of golden hour and glowing lanterns. Night encroaches at the corners, but the party is in full swing. I love how soft and warm the scene is.

For the past two months or so, I’ve been enamored with traditional quilts with a modernist spin as well as bright fixtures on dark backgrounds. I designed this baby quilt (32” x 44”) with these inspirations in mind. Rainbow eight-pointed stars, squares, and a variation of nine-patch blocks glow on a black sky. The ground is contained by a border of flying geese and thin blocks of color. I love how the border order changes from one half to the next. The floral backing is a near perfect match—such a lucky find—and I wish I had made the binding all floral. The contrast between the bold, solid pattern and the ditsy floral print should be highlighted more.

INSPIRATION

Ardneks’s entire portfolio, always. Riso prints, duplicity, patterns galore, bows, two-color quilts, hand tattoos, asymmetrical earrings. My Pinterest, here.

MUSIC

I have trouble listening to music when I’m sad. I go through a journey where at first, I must have complete silence. Around day three or four, I listen to the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s magnificent piece, The Visitors, on repeat. Some of the genius of this video work lies in its ambiguous tone and lyrics (a poem written by his ex wife, Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir). It can be a song of mourning or it can be a song of celebration. Either way, it is a mesmerizing musical composition full of beauty and life. After two days of this loop, I can introduce in Youth Lagoon’s The Year of Hibernation, Beethoven’s symphonies (4 and 7 are my favorite), Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians, and NTS Radio’s “Slow Focus” Infinite Mixtape. Easy, calm listening. A week in, the soothing favorites start to pepper in: The National, Sylvan Esso, Nilüfer Yanya. Music brings me back to life.

Albums I’ve been loving:

The Moon Is In The Wrong Place — Shannon & The Clams

All Born Screaming — St. Vincent

The Year of Hibernation — Youth Lagoon

Forever — Charly Bliss

Juicy Sonic Magic (Live in Brussels) — The National

MUSINGS

I was planning on writing about my beloved cat Beatrix’s recent illness and her devastating prognosis, about grieving for someone who is still on this Earth, of preparing for a death, but it still feels too fresh. The words are there, scattered across journal entries, text messages, Word documents, and notes, but I don’t have the energy to edit them into a coherent essay.

All I can say right now is that I’m heartbroken. I’m not ready to write a eulogy for my baby. She’s still here, her heart—though overgrown—is still beating, and she’s not in pain. She still unfurls her body to take in all the sunlight, burrows into soft blankets and pokes a dainty paw out to test the air, demands for food in angry howls. I look at her in all her silly pink perfection, in awe of my unconditional love for this girl, in despair about the unfairness of life, in shock that our time together is being drastically severed. I don’t know how I’m going to live without her. She’s been by my side for nearly the entirety of my adult life. Of course life will go on, of course I will continue living once she’s gone. But I just don’t know how I will.

I can’t believe she’ll be leaving me soon. I’m not okay. I won’t be okay for a long time. It’s only going to get harder as she starts to show symptoms, as we approach the dreaded sixth-month mark, and that terrifies me. I say I don’t know what to do but really, I do. I will face this disease head on, make her take her medication, and give her so much love. An outpouring of love. And I will focus on the time we still have, not the time that we don’t.

Please keep Bea in your thoughts over these next months, and come over and keep us company.

Thank you to everyone who has reached out. Your companionship, words, and financial support are so comforting. We feel so loved.

Thank you as well for reading. See you next month (I promise!); all my love! xx