we're back!

Hello all! I am back from a 2 week hiatus. I’ve been processing some deep personal challenges and needed a break from Cattails. In the meantime I also came to some big realizations with the comics. For most of my art practice I’ve been working with digital arts and have found it to be a fast way to convey what I want to convey. But one of the reasons why I left the digital arts world was because of its harmful effects on my body and mental health. I would get a brain fog from staring at the computer, and at the end of the day I would struggle with being present due to this brain fog. I am noticing it happening again as I start to colorize on the computer.

Part of the ethos of Cattails is slow growth, growth from underneath, growth within, growth up top. In this current society, just our output is elevated to the highest regard and growth in other aspects are not seen as relevant to what can be produced and sold. Slowly in the past four months of creating, I have started to succumb to those pressures and Cattails has become less joyful for me to create.

Creating Cattails started out as something to serve me and my life, and I am seeing myself shift towards a prioritization of output as I start to receive more and more positive feedback from the series and requests from folks for prints and products.

However, at the end of the day, Cattails needs to be made for me and my journey. So I will start colorizing by hand again, which is something I am afraid of doing because I’m not good at it. It won’t be easy to see the “quality” downgrade as I’m used to the hyper specific coloring I get from using digital tools, and I’m used to easily fixing my mistakes on the computer. But I know that a hand processed color practice will in the long term, hone in my skills as an illustrator and give me an outlook of intention with each stroke rather than an attitude of “oh I can fix that on my digital tool.”

Thank you all for being part of this journey with me, and I look forward to putting out my hand colorized comic this Sunday!

Kai