#lacelitober: Weeks 4-5
Friends, we made it! To each and every one of you who’ve explored my #lacelitober prompts with me, left me thoughtful comments of encouragement along the way, or took the time to cheer on any of your friends participating in art challenges this month, THANK YOU. 🥰
I’ve created more illustration work in this solitary month than I have all year long. You may not have realized your part in it, but you’ve been spurring me on, filling my energy stores when I felt depleted or disheartened, and encouraging new sparks of imagination. It’s meant more than you may know.
🗳️ Help me choose which illos to turn into cards, postcards, calendars, stickers, bookmarks, or washi tape! Vote on which illustrations will end up on Lacelit products.
Take a peek at the hashtag while in the IG app to see everyone's creations throughout the month of October. Here's a wrap-up of my final days of #lacelitober...
This endearing anglerfish just doesn’t have it in him to snack on pretty little buttermoth-jellies, so he’s gone vegetarian and uses his light as a token of friendship instead. 🫶 Let’s play an emoji game! What other unlikely animal friendships would make you smile, friends? Leave a comment with your emoji pairings! 🐱+🐭
We explored the juxtaposition of shadow and luminescence at yesterday’s Light & Dark-themed guided created retreat, and I was drawn to the phrase, “trick of the light”. I’m fascinated by the way fog can roll in or mist can fall with its gentle cover as if the world is being tucked in for the night. How even though it’s made up of mere water molecules that we can pass through with ease, their effect in obscuring what we see if powerful and mysterious. 🤍
Let’s play a fun emoji game together! What’s something unexpected you can imagine as castle?? Leave your imaginative emojis on my IG post, and I’ll pick one to reimagine as a castle in illustration or collage form! 💭💡 Meanwhile, here’s Castle Prickly Pear! Scaling these spiny barrels takes a stout heart and a careful bit of maneuvering, but this grinning iguana was up to the task! 🦎
Sometimes, we just need someone who cares to remind us that our needs matter, too. ⭐️
Here’s an extra geeky illo I’m working on for all you Potterheads out there. ⚡️I couldn't possibly pass up the chance to draw Flourish & Blotts in Diagon Alley for this prompt. 😉 I mean, a magical bookshop?! 📚 Looks like the proprietor’s been working on a special, larger-than-life window display for an upcoming book signing event! 😀 Aaaand, I just couldn’t resist imagining a magical stationery shop next door for all our quill and parchment needs! 📜🪶 Since the drawing took quite a bit of time, I haven’t had the chance to add color yet. I’ll definitely post the finished piece once I have it all done. Any guess as to what colors I’m going to use? 🎨
Please Note: I condemn the author's transphobic views, critiquing and exploring the world of Harry Potter through a lens of love and in support of equality for all.
Does anyone else feel like they could use a day away to swing in a gentle breeze until everything around you stills, and it’s only you and the soothing back-and-forth of lull-and-sway? 🌿 Watch me assemble this collage.
I cozied up in my studio with a cup of tea for @z.en’s *Tea Hi•stories* workshop. In the lovely company of a cloud of creatives, Zen gently guided us through prompts, sharing the history of tea and its colonization, and held space for us to do the same within our own creative mediums. I started in words and ended in collage, and the evening was incredibly meaningful to me.
My collage stems from conversation and tea maps and scribbled poems and dwelling on the joys, comfort, culture, and injustice surrounding tea. It brings me to my beloved genmaicha. 🍵 Sipping history steeped in memory trickling down through generations and stories and hands gingerly cupped around yunomi. Steam rising with a scent of bitter green leaves and the earthiness of roasted popped rice kernels that equal ‘home’.
This piece was a way for me to explore something beautiful without ignoring where it came from and what’s been done to it. Being of mixed race, I think about the deep connection I have to ocha, endeared to me through my Japanese family and culture, while honoring its beginning in China where the steeping of tea leaves originated. I feel sorrow and shame knowing I also come from British ancestors who participated in the colonization of stolen tea from India, and it makes me want to pay more attention to how I engage with and understand tea. Celebrating the gift it is in this world, but never forgetting the cost. 🤍
Tea carries both- a severing and a deep knowing. This is at the heart of my relationship with tea. Thank you, dear Zen, for this meaningful, inspiring workshop. 🤍
Tut tut, it looks like rain! 🌧☂ Let’s play a silly emoji game! What would be most amusing to find raining down on your umbrella instead of water? Leave your silliest emojis on my IG post! How about 🌂? 😂 Or, maybe🫐! 😋
What if thimbles were seeds filled with memories?
i shall wear midnight
wrapping the deep
around me
folding in until
light can’t pierce
and sound won’t reach
quiet falls with shadow friends
i shall wear midnight
dampening echoes
around me
flooding in until
all is covered in endless ink
and starlit sky
moon glows and stillness settles in
and i can breathe ✨
Visit my IG post to watch me draw this illustration.
. . .
And now... we REST.
♡ Kimberly Kuniko
P.S. To connect more regularly + early access to blogposts, join my $1/month Endearlings tier on Patreon.
Words, Art + Photography by
© Kimberly 國子Taylor-Pestell
