Creative Recommendations for June

What I'm reading, learning, watching, and making art with!

Hi friends,

It’s time for my Creative Recommendations for June! Each month, I curate my favorite things I’ve been reading, learning, watching, and making art with. These are just for my lovely paying subscribers.

Reading

This weekend, I read the graphic novel Feelings: A Story in Seasons by Manjit Thapp in under an hour. The art is absolutely stunning. Her ability to convey mood through color is one of the best I’ve seen. The concept is around processing emotions in the context of seasons, something I have been noodling on a lot these days. Read here.

I’ve also been listening to the audiobook of The Hidden Life of Trees at the end of the day to wind down. It’s like the audio-only version of a David Attenborough film and infinitely soothing. I started reading it as research for my Quietest Places in New York City book because I created mindfulness prompts for each location. I wanted to weave in grounding techniques to connect us with nature even when we are in urban environments. Listen here.

Making Art With

I just started using pen in my illustration, and I’m so proud of how it’s turning out. I’m using uniball Vision Elite pen. I’ve been exploring how to use a unified color palette and it’s been blowing my mind. Until now, I haven’t mixed any colors in my Kuratake watercolor kit. Learning how to mix and tone down the vibrancy feels like unlocking a new style of art without buying new materials.

Also I’m open for commissions! I’m hoping to do more editorial work this year (maybe in this new style?). Feel free to reach out if you ever have a project you’d like me to work on like watercolor infographics, editorial art, gifts, etc.

Learning

I’m trying to do “Fun Fridays” where I make art for pleasure at the end of the week for a few hours. It started one afternoon when I had a migraine and all I could do was paint. Looking at screens hurts when I have a migraine, so I just put paint to paper. I painted on the biggest paper I’ve ever worked on (18”x24”) for the first time and had so much fun. I want to try painting on larger scales, working towards a bigger goal of creating large-scale or interactive public art.

Listening to

I’ve been binging the

WHAT IF WE GET IT RIGHT?

podcast by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. It’s a show about climate solutions and helping us envision what getting right on climate looks like, so we can bring that vision into reality. I think about creating art with the same intention, so listening and learning from Ayana always brings me joy!

She did a reunion episode with Alex Blumberg that was amazing. I miss the How to Save a Planet podcast they did together and it was fun hearing the origin stories of it. Listen here.

I’ve started listening to the

Liz Moody

podcast and really enjoy it. It’s a wellness podcast with a practical, playful tone. This was such a fun episode with one of my favorite food creators,

Justine Doiron

. They talk about using the “novelty rule” to embrace newness, whether you are making old habits or chores feel new or trying new experience. This is a neuroscience hack to make more meaningful memories, slow down time, and live more intentionally. Listen here.

Watching

I save the most embarrassing section each month for my paid subscribers. So my guilty pleasure has been watching