Friday Thoughts (Ep. 21)

Hello, Patrons and Friends! A very happy Friday to you from here in Ragonia: population 1. 

Okay, population 2, as my studio manager stares me down angrily.

Today was a weird week for this independent business owner. I had a closing shift at the cafe on a Tuesday evening, which kind of threw me off my routine. That, and the skies were filled with so much wildfire smoke that Seattle had 7x worse air quality than Beijing. That, and I don’t have a hard and fast plan for my short term artistic future, which I definitely need to clarify for myself. All excuses for a relatively unproductive week.

Tasks I did achieve:

1. Finally bit the bullet and submitted work to a total of 13 Illustration Agents, including Illozoo, the Bright Agency, Marie Bastille, and Lemonade. Nearly all state that they don’t respond unless they are interested, but I’ve received two very nice No Thank You, but Try this Place, or Keep Submittings!

2. Had a productive art meeting with Tori . We periodically have meetings discussing how we’re feeling about art and what we need to do in the near future, drinking coffee, and making lots of lists. We started  plan our offerings for Geek Girl Con in October, and what we want our table to look like.

3. Started and finished a custom anniversary illustration for my good friend and patron Zoe. She had a very cute digital portrait idea of her, her boyfriend Nate, and their three cats. My boyfriend peeked in and contributed a few experimental elements to the portrait. See if you can tell what he added:

4. I also started or finished two personal projects I’d been meaning to work on. I have a lot of earrings, but the vast majority of them are single earrings because the second earring fell out while I was walking around. I also follow a lot of amazing jewelry designers who make these big beautiful avant- garde earrings that I currently can not afford within reason. So for selfish reasons I wanted to make a few new pairs of funky big earrings or myself!

These are made out of polymer clay like my other earrings and pins, but haven’t been painted yet. They’re each about 2.5 inches long. After I finish them for myself, I might add them to my roster of wares! They’re much faster to make than my produce earrings. What do you think?

I also finished this procreate illustration that I started weeks ago when I was in Antigua! I wanted to finish it while it was still summer. My mind is definitely starting to shift towards autumn. I am such a cold weather person. I started following a couple autumn and Halloween themed Instagrams, dreaming about pumpkin spice everything, sweaters, cozy days, video games while wrapped in blankets, squashes, all of our media that we save for autumn (Over the Garden Wall, Gravity Falls, American Horror Story, Stranger Things....)

See! There I go! So before I go full autumn (it’s still August after all!) I’m trying to squeeze the last drops out of this PNW Summer, with my summer dresses, vegan hotdogs and hamburgers, all the peaches and cherries, hopefully swimming in Green Lake or Golden Gardens beach. Let this smoke lift so I can live the last of summer! 

ONE LAST THING: If you all haven’t checked out my Etsy in a while I highly recommend it, I’ve been updating it with all my new products!

✨ ragonia.etsy.com ✨

That’s all for this week, friends! 

I hope you’re having a good one!

xoxo

Ragon