This year has been great! February - epic!
I want to stay positive, but the sarcasm is thick.
2024 has actually started with so many losses. For my family, for friends and their families, wherever. It seemed to be announced on every platform.
If you are following my Instagram, you will have seen several attempts at painting/illustrating lilies. This is because a gracious uncle had passed away on February 9th. His kids (my cousins) have been such important people in my life in the last couple of years. And now they are having to say goodbye to their dad.
I wanted to create something special.
We're distant cousins in the literal sense - but digitally close. Learning this news or their loss still "hit home".
These cousins are good people. I hope they know that.
So. Motivation to get a drawing out that 'means' something.
Not too much time later, more drastic news came about a friend, and then others. And more. I could not keep up.
And these damn lilies weren't turning out like I wanted them.
In the meantime, I did learn that for a Ukrainian funeral, I needed to have the flowers in even numbers. Did you notice this detail in this design? (My uncle and his family are Ukrainian, btw) I wanted it to be mean something.
Then.
THEN.
Another passing. Good gracious, Universe. Enough already!
I gave up on trying to do a lily like I thought it needed to be and created one that I liked. And I needed to get this done.
This is a detail of the watercolor and color pencil drawing I created for this greeting - sympathy card.
I do hope that a few words and art can bring some joy to the person who opens it up from its envelope.
Frankly, that's exactly why I do this.
I'll tell you how all this greeting card stuff got started in a later blog.
This blog post is 100% human generated content. All errors are my own. Only thanks to modern tech to get this out into the world.