April round-up

This is going to be one of those slightly chaotic grab-bag newsletters, sorry. I promise I won’t make a habit of it. Everything’s been a bit scattered this past month so this’ll be a sort of clearing of the decks (or swooping arm swiping everything off my desktop) and then maybe I’ll get back to business proper.

First things first…

This week (thursday evening) I’m talking with Orange Beak about illustration, illustrating books and general image-making related things. It’s online and there’ll be loads of time for questions. Orange Beak are a brilliant organisation who are delivering useful, interesting and exciting talks, advice and information for illustrators. At a time when art education has become so prohibitively expensive attending Orange Beak events its a nice, easy way to get insight from some of the greats whilst sat at home with your feet up. Lovely.

One of my favourite teaching staples is ‘aesthetic style is not a thing you (an artist) ever, every need to think about’ and Roman Muradov effectively and efficiently summed that up in the note he posted (screenshot above) last month. He also wrote really well, last week, about AI here. Half of it is paywalled but the free part is excellent. Obviously we all feel a bit despairing about it all and I’m trying to resist writing about it for fear that it will truly open the floodgates of all my dystopian nightmares (the few we’re not already living in) and I’ll never get myself back on track. So Roman’s thoughts will be it, for now. For what it’s worth I think it’s quite positive (what he says) in that it frames endeavour as the important part, not the outcome.

I really enjoyed Lauren Bravo on the timeless style of Shirley Hughes’ picture book Mums. My list of unwritten substacks includes ‘the enduring allure of Alfie’s brown shoes’ which posits that I never really progressed beyond thinking that Alfie’s brown lace up’s were the most grown up shoes imaginable. I won’t write this, don’t worry.

Books!

Children of Radium- Joe Dunthorne. I’m a big fan of Joe’s writing and this non-fiction account of of his jewish great grandfather’s complex scientific endeavours during the second world war makes for a very gripping read. I can’t recommend it enough really. The historical and scientific stuff is fascinating, it’s frequently funny and the way that Joe shows us the how the many threads of different family members ‘making sense of things’ get tangled is really masterful.

Family Happiness- Laurie Colwin. I can’t fathom that I’d never read any Laurie Colwin till last month (now I’ve read two) because her writing is so shocking on the nose of exactly what I like. This one is about family, a woman muddling through, romance and anxiety. Yes please thank you very much. Get the edition with an intro by Lisa Owens to ready yourself for her book which is out next year.

How To End a Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner- I’ve banged on about Helen Garner before and I won’t repeat myself but this enormous collection of Garner’s diary writing is maybe a vital to your life? Maybe? At the very least it’ll improve it ten-fold, not least because of the lovely orange cover.

Here’s a painting from earlier this month. I’m part-way through a few projects so haven’t had much time for my own work this year so I took a saturday afternoon and did some very straightforward painting to keep my hand in. It’s nice to make some decorative nonsense now and again.

Finally, we went to Rye and stayed at the Fig and had the nicest breakfast we’ve had in ages (twice).

I rekcon that’s all for now.

More soon!

Lizzy

Donations

If you have some small change (or big change) leftover at the end of this month then please consider rehoming it in one of these places.

Queer Youth Art Collective- doing great things for young LGBTQIA+ artists online and in London (despite reductions in their funding).

At the moment I’m dropping a few pounds at Medical Aid for Palestinians as often as possible. If you’re not able to do this then you can use their template to email your MP (in the UK) here. Or maybe do both if you fancy it?