Cosmic Parenthood

Picture Booking About the Past, Picture Booking About the Future.

Hey folks and friends, it’s been a loooong time. When I started this Substack I think I said “hey, you can expect a post from me every couple of weeks, or maybe once a month,” and wow, life has made it hard to hold to that. Months have flown by with precious little time to get into my studio or in front of my computer to compose something meaningful enough to share. But it’s a new year, my schedule is shifting a little, and I’m discovering (and deliberately carving out) pockets of time in this stage of my life. And the whole reason for that long Substack drought is what I’m writing about here today. So this is just to say: it feels like the right moment to jump back in here to talk about parenthood, and its place in my most recent book, Cosmic Wonder.

The entire making of Cosmic Wonder was informed by the experience of parenthood, from the book’s inception to my final brushstrokes. The idea first came to me when I was a brand new mom, holding my maybe 5 week old baby and thinking of the long lineage of parents who had done the same before me.

You might know that picture books usually take a long time to make. From book pitch to publication can be three or more years. It might be different for other book makers, but for me so far it’s worked out as one year for text, one year for illustrations, and one year for the publisher to work their magic and transform it into a book.

After pitching CW I was raising my first baby, and while finalizing the text I became pregnant with my second. The illustrations were created with a maternity leave in the middle, where I took one month off when I had baby Willow. The last half of the illustrations were made while pining away for my newborn in my studio, though I took breaks to nurse her every two hours. Honestly I 10/10 do not recommend this schedule, but life doesn’t always fit cleanly within your deadlines.

Although the text of the book only has one overt nod to parenthood, I knew that I wanted this (very primal/very human) experience to have a greater visual presence in its pages. So I added babies,

and parents,

and kids,

and pregnancy.

I snuck it in everywhere I could.

I thought about the past, and how children were raised. I thought about the future, and how children will transform it.

And I added nods to my own children and their places in this book, with a Rowan tree on the first spread, and a Willow tree part way through.

In my first book, A Green Place to Be, I built in a squirrel hunt. Cosmic Wonder has an unofficial parenthood hunt. Some spreads that take place on Earth don’t have children in them, but I like to think that they’re there even in the less obvious ones - there are probably some kids watching Romeo and Juliet here with their parents among the groundlings. If you have a copy, take a look and see how much parenthood you can find!

Thanks for joining me here for this first-in-a-long-time post. I’ve found that parenthood makes one very future-minded, so let’s segue to that. What’s going to come next here? Well, I’m relaxing my goals for now and aiming for a quarterly Substack post, maybe monthly if I’m able to. Future posts will continue to be about picture book making, but there might also be some slice-of-life comics. Going forward I’ll probably focus less on the final art and more on the rough process, although I’ve still got a few posts in my pocket looking at the art for Cosmic Wonder. Since I’ve got some new projects lining up I’m hoping to take you along for the journey in real time. Wondering will continue to be free while I figure out my schedule here, but I may have a paid option for more in-depth posts if I’m able to post more frequently.

For now I’ll be sharing what I can every quarter, and I’m just grateful that you’re here. Wishing you a new year of strength, courage, creativity, and hopefully peace.