What a month - Hello spring!
Well, I am alive! However, I think I have coughed more than taken actual breaths of air in the last 2 weeks. Despite my best efforts, I managed to catch what I initially thought was the nastiest chest cold I’ve had in ages and am now slowly crawling my way back from what turned out to be an ugly case of bronchitis. If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time I’ve been sick since 2024 and I have sadly broken my year and half long run of being cold and flu-free! But regardless, I will live to fight (and tattoo) another day.
My last day as a healthy person before disaster struck. Soaking up that beauuutiful weather we had with some hot soup and thai tea to soothe the beginnings of my sore throat…
So what should we talk about? I’m kinda excited about this new blog-style format. I feel like there’s so many ways to share and connect here that I don’t have the freedom to do on instagram. The world is my oyster. What I’m most excited for is to see the potential this blog has to replace social media. While I meant what I said in my first post about not deleting instagram outright just YET, I still have a strong hope it will no longer be needed once enough time passes with the growth of this blog. A huge part of that will not just depend on all of you, but me as well. I’ll aim to post here hopefully once a month and any time an essential update happens.
Let’s start with what’s old and then jump into what’s new.
First off, the old booking system is OUT. And I do be terrified. Change, am I right? Something I’ve always tried to remain open to is changing the way I do things. The goal is to get better and better at what I’m doing over time and sometimes, in order to keep up with self improvement, I have to change things out to better fit our needs. But of course, I’m already hating the process. Everything is too new and my need for things to be instantly perfect is obviously not realistic. But much like my cold, I will survive this too. I’m deeply appreciative all new and old clients being patient with me during this transition. While I hoped to make the change happen like the flip of a switch, unfortunately a lot of the troubleshooting and fine tuning has to be done in real time with real life scenarios that can’t be seen or sorted when initially setting up a new booking system. Ya’ll rule.
What else is old? Remember those square business cards? Well those are also OUT and replaced with…*drumroll*…..
…the exact same business card except now it’s a fancy gold foil finish hahaha.
But you don’t care about business cards. Or maybe you do, idk, who am I to judge.
So let me show you some things I think you might ACTUALLY care about.
About exactly a month ago, I triumphantly finished my clouded leopard painting that I had spent months working on. Despite being a slow artist, had I devoted scheduled time to painting, this project would have actually been finished ages ago. But it’s officially complete and will soon be available for sale. As long as I keep on schedule, I hope to prepare it for auction, along side in-progress paintings in the coming months.
Would you want this clouded leopard painting as a print?
Soon after completing the clouded leopard, I already moved on to blocking for the next painting. Can you guess what kind of big cat it is? I feel like I’ve made it pretty obvious…
I have been a mixed media artist for probably most of my life now. And something I’ve always felt frustrated about is my pace. I am slow at everything. I am slow tattooer, slow sketch artist, slow painter, slow sculptor, slow craftsman. You name it, I am a snail. I thought I’d gain more speed after years of practice. So far, that has not been the case. Those of you who get tattooed by me…you know all too well. Between going back every time I spot a little corner, having to tediously add a layer at a time, and then yapping my big fat mouth, it takes me an eternity. I’m looking to change my feelings of prejudice on this though. Instead of shaming myself into constantly thinking of this as a weakness, I’m going to try and celebrate when a project is finally done. Not everybody works at the same pace. When I became so obsessed and focused on being faster and faster, I saw that it was just interrupting my productivity. And worse yet, visibly degrading my quality of work. So if I have to choose between speed and quality for the rest of my life, it will always be quality. We’re leaving yucky self shaming back in 2025 where it belongs.
The last week or so while I’ve been sick, the weather has started to noticeably turn and with yesterday marking the first official day of spring, I feel instantly refreshed. I’ll likely still have this ugly cough for another couple of weeks, but rest assured, it’s bark is worse than it’s bite (not contagious), and I’m itching to join society again and come out of my quarantine hole.
For spring, I have so many overwhelming ideas that I want to carry out and create and once again, I’m frozen with indecision. Which idea do I start first? Will I be able to complete everything by myself? Will I have enough time to make all these ideas happen? Blegh! I DO have one project however that’s already been drafted and ready to start. A project very personal and dear to me and incredibly symbolic…
Now do I tease it here or do I create a separate blog post all of it’s own for this?
I can’t help myself so a just a little teaser…
As you’ve probably already seen me mention, this is my 6th year in business. And that is having a greater impact than the milestone of 5 years. Which truthfully, year 5 came and went so quietly because all the excitement happening in my personal life was so chaotic and spinning me in a vortex, that by the time I realized it was the studio’s anniversary, it had already come and gone. This year I’m free of distractions like last year and have been able to sit and reflect.
The mock up pictured above is a cutout of my most current logo, depicting a ginkgo leaf. All my logos and branding have incorporated different variations of ginkgo leaves over the last 6 years. And the reason for that is actually incredibly simple. There’s ginkgo trees in Warwick. That’s it. That’s the reason. But more personally, I notice them the most because they’re the most unique and I just really like them. Ginkgo leaves are also not native to Warwick and well…neither am I! So we have a lot in common haha. We both found our way to Warwick and planted roots here.
The day I signed the lease to my studio, we went to celebrate at a restaurant that used to be next door. While we sat, ginkgo leaves from the tree out front had been falling because it was September and one as big as my hand fluttered down. I’m not really a superstitious person but I felt like it was a good omen. And from there, the ginkgo logo was there to stay.
So in honor of 6 years in business, I’ve decided to make a little something…and that’s all I will say for now ;)
I feel like this turned into a pretty good, solid blog post. Which wasn’t that hard honestly, I’m always blabbing so I never run out of things to talk about haha. But this feels like a great place to bookmark things for now. And hopefully in a few weeks, I’ll have some more exciting things to share with you for spring.
Enjoy the weather! Stay clean, stay focused, stay strong. Frankenstein, have fun with your friends.
thanks for reading
-emily
