June in Ragonia (2021) (Patreon)

Hello Patrons and happy soon-to-be-July! There's a thin, bright layer of clouds in the sky and it's a typical cool Seattle summer day (74°F / 23°C). Which I am absolutely living for because, if you haven't heard, the PNW just smoldered through a historic three day heat wave. But I'll talk more about that in a bit! I'm vibing to a jazz playlist that always makes me feel productive and adult somehow, so pop that on if you'd like to feel the same vibes, grab yourself a cool bev, and let's chat.

Before I start I want to welcome our new patrons for the month of June - a big sunny happy arty welcome to Renata and Carli! I hope you're enjoying the Ragonia exclusive content so far, please feel free to comment, message, let me know any way I can make the Patreon a more awesome place. You're also welcome to introduce yourself on the Community page and get to know more about your fellow Ragonia Patrons!

And now let's jump into my little newsletter of the happenings in my freelance artist career world and life! What did I do this month? What news hath I brought unto thee?

Rough vs. final illustration for the book I'm working on.

BOOK FINALS

The book final illustrations continue! I have two months until their due, and I'm currently on a two page a day schedule, five days a week. And that's juuuust about all my hand/wrist/arm/shoulder muscles can handle. Much slower than I expected so I'm glad my editor gave me longer to work on these.

I think it's looking nice so far and it sounds like the publishers and author are really excited about it. I'm trying to be consistent with my line weights throughout the books so there's a lot of checking back and forth, but as usual with big projects I find myself getting more and more finnicky as I go. (I do the same thing with portraits over the holidays.) That both slows be down and changes the way the art looks, so to combat I'm trying to use time limits for each page to make sure I don't spend hours redrawing the same few lines.

Can't wait to show you the whole book when it's published in (omg) 2023, for now it'll just have to be these lil' glimpses. This is definitely my main focus for the summer, in addition to mailing Etsy orders and articles for you guys here on Patreon!

My new tissue paper and sticker designs! Here it comes!

NOISSUE COLLAB PART 3

This month I got to order my third set of packaging materials in collaboration with Noissue. They partner with a lot of artists to offer free custom tissue paper and packaging in exchange for advertising on social media. I'd been putting off this third collab for a long time because I felt too busy or unsure about what I wanted my business and packaging to look like for the future (since I feel like it's changing some how.) 

After a lot of waffling and getting ready to pass on the offer again, I realized I was definitely just being a perfectionist and should just DO IT and make some new packaging! I'm excited about the new designs, it feels pretty flexible for whatever direction my branding goes in the future, and has more of the bit of silliness I know I want to go for.

Another design I didn't use because I overcomplicate everything.

QUICK THOUGHTS ON NOISSUE: I feel a little conflicted about this company's products because although they do strive to be a environmentally conscious company through carbon offsets, recycled  and low-impact materials, etc. They also manufacture and ship their less than 1000 Minimum Order Quantities (MOQ) from China, which is a long way for just packaging to travel, but most custom packaging companies don't manufacture small quantities in the US either. They talk about this a bit here. That said things like washi tape and enamel pins are manufactured far away as well, but since it's just packaging... You know, up to you. Global manufacturing is good and it isn't, ya know ya know¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I do generally like what they do so I'm happy to collab with them, but I want to be direct with you guys. Don't feel pressured by artists collabing with companies, you don't have to order custom paper from Noissue to be legit or awesome. IMO unless you're ordering big quantities of packaging products (1,000+) I would stick with a local sustainable company that's not customized, and you can customize it with your own stickers or business cards or whatever. I'd just search "Made in (Your Country/Region) 100% Recycled Tissue Paper", there's a lot of companies that make TONS of colors and they're VERY affordable and don't have to travel across the world to you. 

Just some thoughts, I don't feel super strong one way or the other. Basically they're a cool company but they're not the only cool company/ way to do packaging as a small business. You get me.

My Rose City Comic Con table from 2019!

NEWSLETTER-Y UPDATES

• My one and only convention of the 2021: The only convention from 2020 that I rolled over to 2021 instead of canceling, and therefore the only convention I'll be tabling at this year is... ROSE CITY COMIC CON in September! Not sure if anyone in the Portland area is planning on attending but I'll be there, masked up and ready to say hi! Maybe we can do a Portland Patron meetup??
• Portraits: I've decided I won't be doing my regular annual holiday commission spots, to give me time to focus on making more personal art and pursuing other client projects. I do think I'll probably offer some of my 5 min doodle portraits and possibly pet only portraits, but my new $15+ patrons always have the opportunity to get at least a doodle portrait any time. Just a heads up for you guys, in case anyone was hoping for portraits this year. Thanks for your understanding!
• Arty Business - Tabling Talk: In April I did a video version of my How to Table Arty Business article for my Portland Indie Game Squad friend's Talent Talks event, and it's now available to watch on their Youtube!

Sun-blocking strats during this weekend's heat wave.

HEAT WAVE

Yeah so if you hadn't heard it was 100°+ in the PNW for at least 3 days this weekend, and Seattle is the least air conditioned major city in the country, with around only around 30% of residents having AC, because high temps used to be very rare. Zach and I are in the 70% without AC, and whoops we only have one small weak fan as well. It was, um, hot as balls.

Some of my crops dried right up. Pumpkin's canned food spoiled in their cans. Our fridge worked so hard to compensate for the heat that our fruit froze inside. Pumpkin herself spent the whole weekend just lying on her side. Across the region, roads buckled from the heat.

We got through by drinking tons of water, opening the windows at night, cooking all our meals ahead of time, covering all our windows with tinfoil held up by washi tape (cause its the only tape I have oh no), lining it with cardboard, and hanging blankets. Luckily it wasn't too humid, so the best way I kept cool was by dampening my shorts in the sink and then wearing them until they dried in an hour and dampening them again. And at night the temps stayed in the 80s, so I got a sheet wet as well and slept under that with the fan blowing on it. Basically everything around me was wet for three days and it actually helped so much. 

Some hot stats from my favorite Twitter page, Seattle Weather Blog:

That said we were lucky to be healthy and okay, to have a dark place to stay and a fan to blow any air at all, to not have a job that required us to work in the sun even in dangerous conditions, to have a sink to wet our sheets and a fridge to store our food and ice, to have each other. 

We made it safe through this heat wave, and are absolutely drinking in the air blowing in from the Pacific Ocean that usually keeps the PNW around 75° in the summer. I hope those of you in the region made it through safe and healthy as well. Let's hope this never happens again.

One last thing: Please look at this vegan cheese board I made this month.

I think that's all for this month! 

How was your June? Did you do anything exciting, achieve anything you're proud of? Are you looking forward to anything this summer? Do you have any requests for Patreon posts or events? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for chatting, thanks for being here, and thanks for being you! I'll see you all in a few weeks for July's Patron post, whatever that will be!