Hello hello!

I hope you're doing great Reader! Today expect a more cozy newsletter issue; we're going to go over some news about the book (not yet released, sadly!) and some extra inspiration :)

But we should first start with the giveaways! (plural!)

(And I promise, I haven’t planned anything for April Fools’ 😌)

Book 👏 News 👏

Now now, that’s not all, of course! If you clicked on the giveaway button last week (I told you not to miss it!), I may have contacted you already :)

Thank you everyone for joining, by the way; I’m very fortunate that you are all looking forward to reading this little book I’ve shared over the past few months!

As I hinted in the intro, the book is not releasing today, unfortunately: I still haven’t received my second print copy, so I really don’t feel comfortable pulling the trigger now.

I’m very confident that this new version will look much better than the previous one, but I’d rather be sure before sending it, or even charging for it.

I’m looking forward to see the better colors (I paid extra for it so it better be worth it!), and the margins:

Because something I really didn’t know before making the book, or at least forgot to account for, is that the center of the book is where all the pages are glued together, so you have to account for extra margin at the center!

You can see in this image that the white frame is practically invisible in the middle, and the text is not easy to read being so close to the edge. Definitely something I’ll remember next time.

Another thing I didn’t know is that I had to pay import taxes on my print copy 😔

Being printed in the UK, the book had to enter the EU and go a long way to reach me; and I had to pay more than the price of the book, on top of the delivery. Darn!

But I’m very grateful that I saw this firsthand; this way I’ll make sure that if you buy or win a copy, this will not fall on you.
This also means that if you won, please give me some time until I’m sure you’ll be okay where you live :)

(we will talk more about it next week, rest assured)

I’m a bit uncertain about when my copy will arrive (like I said, test copies are printed in the UK, unfortunately), but once I enable distribution, books will be printed on demand from the US, Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Poland, South Korea… so copies should be printed near most of you!

I’ll be on the move this weekend, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the book will be there soon! 🤞

The Zine version is getting some style!

On the topic of the book, you may know that I’m preparing a zine version for my upcoming convention!

In case you’re not sure what I mean by this, a Zine is a little handmade magazine or book meant to be easily shared and reproduced. Most have a very distinct DIY aesthetic, and that’s what inspired me to turn Susie’s book into a zine :)

The perfect opportunity to make something accessible for the upcoming convention! My first one ever will be in two weeks, the 12th of April, in case you missed it!

But I wanted to do more than just a grayscale version of the book: that’s why I created a tool to automatically dither all the illustrations!

Using my programmer skills and some templates, I created a little web app that allows me to turn any PDF from color to a bunch of black pixels that, from afar, recreate the complete illustration.

It’s a bit similar to pixel art in a sense, or old-school printing; and it also reminds me of Low Tech Magazine, a solar-powered website about ecology that uses the technique for all their images.

I made my own tool because there is nothing out there to convert entire PDFs this way. For now, it’s only on my machine and for my own use, but if enough people are interested I might release it online on my website!

Some said already that they would use it to make pictures more printable, for example. If you have an idea of what you would use it for, please tell me!

Making the tool was, thankfully, not too time-consuming, but getting it online would take some extra effort, so that’s why I want to make sure people would have fun with it!

A Falling Star 🌠

Now onto some of what (re)inspired me this week!
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This week I stumbled upon an old folder with screenshots from years ago: I’ve accumulated a ton of images over the years; not many are relevant anymore.

But one in particular I wanted to share with you this week: my wallpaper.

This screenshot was taken in September 2022, but I’ve had this painting as a background since at least 2019, more than five years ago. It means a lot to me, so I wanted to share a bit more with you!

This painting is called “Falling Star” (1884) by Witold Pruszkowski. Yes, you guessed it, he’s a Polish artist! Not the first time I’m sharing one on this newsletter :)

But the interesting thing is that I discovered this painting way before knowing anyone from Poland, let alone that I would live there in the future.

What captivated me about the painting is its atmosphere and its beautiful composition. The movement suspended in the air, its unusual subject matter… It really touched me.

It turns out that this painting is not the most popular by this artist; the Polish Wikipedia page of the artist doesn’t even display it as an example of his work.

Worst of all, a few months ago, I visited Warsaw and the National Museum: it turns out that the painting is housed there, just not on display! I’m glad I didn’t expect to see it; I would have been a bit disappointed 😔

The atmosphere of the painting feels like a dream too, and that’s the case with a lot of Pruszkowski’s paintings! Let me show you some of them:
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“Eloe Among the Graves” (1892) is adapted from a poem (“Anhelli”), where the angel commands the dead to be quiet. This one requires a lot of Polish lore to understand (still much for me to learn!), but the calm but haunting atmosphere is captivating to me. Like a dream you’re not sure yet how it will turn out.

Here are some more examples of the same series:

Out of all the images I have accumulated, transferred from machine to machine over the years, screenshots are really the ones that make me nostalgic. They are a great time capsule of what I was doing at the time and what my interests were!

So one thing I would like to encourage you to do, and that I will do myself, is to take more of them! Maybe future you would be grateful :)

And this is it for today! A bit of a lighter one, but I’ll see you next week with more art and news about the book! And a lot more about the convention; it’s gonna be the last week before going there :D

If you received an email for one of the two giveaways this week, congratulations 🎉

Talk to you soon!

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Take care,
- Nighten