Mid-October Greetings

Hi friends,

How’s everyone doing out there?

Do you celebrate Halloween where you live? Are you dressing up? Are you making costumes for your kids? I helped mine with costumes for comic con this year, including a fairly involved Bill Cipher get-up for Milo. I figured it could double as his Halloween costume, but apparently it will not do because it will be annoying to trick-or-treat in. Alas. The heart wants what it wants.

Kiki, Bill Cipher, and Eddie Munson

Slowpoke Recommends

A few recent picture book acquisitions:

The Queen in the Cave by Júlia Sardà

Júlia Sardà, you guys. Júlia Sardà! She’s such a good illustrator. I’m simultaneously jealous of her talent and dying to see what she’ll do next. The Queen in the Cave is exquisite. My family also loves The Liszts, illustrated by Júlia and written by Kyo Maclear.

This Is Ireland by Miroslav Šašek

I bought this in Ireland as a gift for my family and when I gave it to them they reminded me that we already have it. I think I have all the books in M. Šašek’s iconic This Is series. If you are an illustrator who has somehow not fallen down this rabbit hole yet, do so with haste! I recently revisited these books and was able to see for the first time just how influential they’ve been to me. Home especially owes a big debt to Miroslav Šašek. As a side note, when I was pregnant with Milo I suggested naming him Miroslav and Colin was all, absolutely not.

The Long Island by Drew Beckmeyer

The Long Island is the kind of conceptual picture book that I love: simple; well designed and illustrated; funny but in a weird, quiet way. Isn’t it so important that we have books for kids that are funny in a quiet way? Thanks to Jon Klassen, the undisputed king of quietly funny picture books, for blazing so many trails and doing his part to ensure this generation grows up with a sophisticated sense of humor.

In Other News

I quit my drawing project - to keep a daily illustrated diary for the entire month of October - on October 4th. My very forgiving personal philosophy is that it’s always okay to set a creative intention and then bail on it, even in full view of whoever is paying attention to you on the internet. Some ideas are fruitful and great and I see them to their end. Some get boring and feel like a chore, and life is too short for unpaid art that feels like a chore.

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Speaking of unpaid art, I started a quilt this week that I will never ever sell because quilts take hundreds of hours to make. In order to earn the lowest minimum wage in the United States ($7.25/hour in Georgia and Wyoming), I would have to sell the last quilt I finished for upwards of $6,000. I’ve lost track of whether I’m talking about how insanely long it takes to make a quilt or how staggeringly untenable it would be to survive on minimum wage, but both things are true.

These two unfinished quilt squares represent 16 hours of work or $116 in Wyoming. Stay tuned!

My next newsletter will be a painting or drawing demo for paid subscribers, so make sure you are one if you’d like to watch it. Also comment below if you have a specific thing you would like to see addressed in a tutorial.

Peace out!
Carson