Goodbye 2020

These are almost all of the illustrations I completed in 2020. There are a few more I couldn't include because they're still under NDA. Looking at them all assembled like this is satisfying. It also makes me realize how much I tend to use the color purple.

*~*~ Superlatives ~*~*

Most Difficult

This frikkin mall scene from the Courtney book series from American Girl. This took FOREVER

Most Unusual

This paper doll, a promotional printable for the book Mexican Gothic from Del Rey Books. I'd never done a paper doll before, and I'm SO glad I got the chance!

Personal Favorite

I was so inspired by the book Mexican Gothic that I created this personal work. This turned out better than my expectations and feels like an artistic breakthrough for me

Most Viral

This stupid little comic that I drew in 5 minutes has, at time of writing, 17k likes on Twitter

~*~*~*~*~

I have a lot to be grateful for this year. Since both my husband and I were already working from home, the shutdown didn't directly affect our income. Illustration jobs were maybe a tad on the slow side this year but not by much. I checked off a bucket list item by getting to work with Penguin Random House on three different projects! I'm also grateful that, so far, all of my family members are healthy, and none of us lost our houses in the wildfires.

Sometimes people ask me, "How do you manage to work from home with kids?" or "How do you manage to create personal work on top of freelance work?" Or "how do you find a balance?"

Look, I don't know if I have anything special figured out. These drawings were created through a haze. The exhaustion that comes from herding small children all day, the sleep deprivation that comes from having a baby, the stress that the news pumped into my veins. Working at a hot computer while our air conditioner died during the height of summer. Working while wondering if my sore throat and headache were symptoms of covid or just smoke inhalation from the wildfires. I didn't blog much, and I didn't post a lot of art on social media. Most of the time, it was all I could do to meet my deadlines.

What I think I've learned from this year is to, hopefully, be less judgmental of others' productivity - especially based on what they post online. Because if 2020 taught me anything, it's that sometimes the people who seem the least productive are the ones working the hardest.

The people going slowest may be the ones with steeper hills to climb.

I used to tell people to work harder! Draw more! Post more on social media! UPDATE THAT PORTFOLIO! But I'm not interested in berating people for not working harder anymore.

Now I just say, do your best. Because that's hard enough.

And that's good enough.

Also: buy a nice espresso machine. You'll thank me.