Good morning Reader!

I hope you had a fantastic weekend! Here we had beautiful spring weather, a perfect time to relax and draw 😊

This week we will go over some fantastic news about this newsletter and some new art I did recently! A nice refresher after last week's intense convention. Enjoy!

(And this time, I’ll try not to go on for too long ;))

You can finally read EVERYTHING from my Newsletter!

I have hinted at it a while ago, but this is now a reality: the complete archive of the Newsletter is now available!

I started this newsletter 7 months (!) ago, and before this week it was impossible to access what I’ve written after it has been published. And I published a ton! You’ll find more than 20 articles there, all very different!

​https://nighten.kit.com​

This taught me a lesson I needed to learn once again:

I initially wanted something completely custom for the blog, controlling all the details and experience of the reader and owning all of the code. I’m a programmer, so those things are very appealing to me. But in fact, this really doesn’t matter to you! The end reader.

I was running into some silly issues with the layout, the connection to my newsletter provider, some coding challenges… All things I could solve on my own with enough effort!

But really, it wasn’t worth delaying it further: I have very little time to actually draw every week, so I need to be honest and make some compromise to do more of what I love. That’s why I finally plugged in the pre-made solution!

And while not perfect, it does the job pretty well :)

Being such a perfectionist just meant that I was putting it off, and so there was no archive at all! I said it often, but I tend to overthink way too much; so I’m happy to have pushed through this barrier!

This is a lesson I will try to use more in the future

But about this archive! I really wanted to have one, not only to preserve this newsletter but also to make it more accessible to newcomers.

If you’ve joined recently (and quite a few of you joined after I released the archive!) you can now browse all the issues you have missed, and see the complete documented process of my upcoming book “Susie & The Blue Roof Witch”, from idea to release!

And this way, it will be way easier to share the articles that interested you with your friends and colleagues :)
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Recommendation!

You have more than 7 months of content to catch up on, so here are some of my favorite issues to revisit:

• ​How I found my style - A reflection about art style and how I found mine
• ​Make the World your Party - The very first issue, 7 months ago! And a complete breakdown of an illustration
• ​Meet the Blue Roof Witch 🧙‍♀️ - You can download and read my book (draft) for free! (it’s coming out I promise)

Have fun reading!

I’m making some cat stickers!

I love those weekends when I have almost nothing else to do than draw 😊

This weekend was one of them, and so I decided to spend almost my entire Sunday doodling and drawing stickers!

Most didn’t make the cut, but here’s one of them that I’m particularly fond of :)

As you might remember from last week’s newsletter, one of the lessons I learned the hard way is that people love stickers, and I definitely want to have some for next time! And working on those was very relaxing on top of that.

Cats are always something I struggle to draw consistently. If you look very closely at my different illustrations, you’ll see that I don’t yet have a set way to draw them.

Sometimes they are very simplistic, other times more realistic… It’s a hard balance to find between “stylization” and something that reads like a cat. And most often I end up with cats with human features 😄 Thankfully I’m quite happy with most of those!

Here are 3 more designs I made as well! A series of cats looking through the window :)

Those still need a bit of work, but I wanted to show them to you anyway!

I want to adjust the colors further for example, and add more shading and texture; but I’m really excited to hold those little guys in my hand!

Speaking of, my partner found a pretty great local printer for her stickers! I spoke about it before, but I’ll prioritize more local solutions for printing my art going forward: not only is it often faster than ordering online, but it’s better quality and often cheaper!

I was chatting with another artist from the recent convention I made, and they were telling me that they add very little margins on their stickers because they ordered them online. And that’s true from my experience too, especially when you need to account for shipping!

Before I go, and because I mentioned it last week, here is the progress on my next big illustration!

It’s taking a good while I have to admit, and the reason is that I really want to push the detail as far as I can with this one! As a result, I struggle a lot on the ink. I mentioned recently that those bushes took me an entire morning!

But I’m now almost at the end of the inking process: the foreground is always what takes the most time. I can’t wait to put color on this soon! :)

Thank you for reading this new issue!

Look forward to next week, where I’ll have some great news for the book (hopefully the last one before the launch!) ; and of course more art to show you 😊

Remember that if you’d like to help, please share this newsletter with your friends :D In the meantime I really appreciate you being 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​