Good morning Reader! 🌟

Long time no see! As planned, we had a little break last week from the regular issue; now I'm back and I have great things to show you! A brand new illustration, and great news for those of you who are waiting for their books 🤗

Let's jump in!

The books finally arrived!

On the last issue, I finally, after months of work, declared my book finished and published! I’m so grateful to finally be able to turn the page (ah!) on this project.

But there is one last thing I need to do now: send it to people!

For that, I finally received my package with 30 brand new copies from the printer!

Receiving one copy by mail was one thing, but a whole stack feels surreal. I’m so glad to finally see them!

They were not cheap to print, I have to admit, but I’ll be giving away most of them anyway: for you guys, some for friends, family, and a comic book club I go to.

The rest I’ll simply have on hand for orders, and for the next convention I’m going to in June! (hopefully this one will go better than last time ;))

If you are one of the people who joined the giveaway for the book, I’ll be shipping them all in the coming days! I’ll keep each of you updated on this, but please be patient as I never had this many gifts to send at once!

If you are new and want to learn more about the book, all the info is right here!​

Let’s pause for a moment 🪴

After months working on my children’s book, one thing that I missed the most was doing standalone illustrations. Well, it was a challenge to get back into it: it took me almost a month to sketch and ink my most detailed illustration yet.

And I’m happy to say now: it’s done! :)

I’m so so proud of how it turned out! I really restrained myself from sharing this one publicly, because I wanted to show it to you first!

Let’s have a closer look! Here is, first of all, a quick composition breakdown:

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In case you don’t know, composition for me is really important; and it mostly works by using lines to guide the view.

As the number of details and complexity increase, it becomes vital to organize elements this way; or else the scene would be very hard to understand at first glance! Just a big mess of details.

For this illustration, I actually started from a picture I found particularly inspiring. From there I did my usual drawing process and made it my own; but the source is pretty clear!

I’m quite happy with the details I added on my own, especially the village!

On the sketch, it was one or two buildings, but considering the distance it really didn’t make any sense to have them this big. And so I had no choice but to add way more details on the final ink… not that I complain, I love doing this!

Conceptually, this illustration is meant as an invitation to pause and observe what’s around you.

Just like the character is doing (her name is Maelle btw!) :) In that sense, it made all the sense in the world to make this illustration as detailed as it is now.

When I prepared my first exhibition last year, I was very worried that people would stop by my artworks quickly, without getting much from it. Just nodding, and moving on to the next piece.

Having a physical person in mind really shifted how I do illustration: if someone took the time to walk in and stop, I was at least gonna make sure they have something interesting to look at.

And this is exactly the same approach with this artwork: by giving you plenty of details to look at, I want to invite you to pause for a moment and appreciate what you’re seeing 🌸 And who knows, maybe that can encourage someone to do it in their daily life too!

Onto the next one!

Keeping the momentum going, I already made a sketch for my next illustration! On the same day I finished the previous one 😄

This new illustration is based on a picture I took myself in the city center of Krakow, as I was walking there with my friend looking for good ramen.

I love how many cables, chimneys and plants are visible; the more I look at it, the better it gets!

I wish my phone could capture more of these beautiful details, but this is more than enough to get my imagination going :)

I’m looking forward to share more progress soon!

Thanks for reading this week's issue! Next week I'm excited to share more art with you; for example, I was very inspired to draw more characters in my sketchbook, but I'll keep it for next week 😊 Or else I would go on for much longer!

See you next week! I'm happy to have you here 🩷

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Take care,
- Nighten

This email is part of my art Newsletter. Invite a friend to join the club: https://club.nighten.fr​