Julia Denos's Blog, page 2

A Wonderful Thing.

I'm turning 30 (oomph) on Sunday. I was born in the heart of winter. I will be honest and tell you 29 has been hard. (I hear the 30's are a piece of cake! ;) But this year, friendship is what has pulled me back when I reached for it. I am learning too, that it is OK to reach for it. Does it make us grown-up to realize we're small? That it's ok to be vulnerable? That we can't do everything ourselves? That sometimes we need to rely on hearts around us...that it's an honor to rely on, and to be relied upon.
Friendship is the thing I am most grateful for as I come to the end of this decade. It is a deep treasure, right? To have one and to be one. To need one and to search for one. To find one and to become one. It's what can bloom between us in the heart of Winter, when we are not afraid to let it Spring. ♥
An enormous Happy 30th to my best childhood friend,  Kay,  today! (She goes over the hill first!)

Happy Valentine's.

Beloved friends, family & readers, THANK YOU for your love through the years.  I'm shooting it right back to you (in creepy kitty form– remember him ?). Don't forget, hugs sink extra deep today!
Love, Julia

Chronicle's "Watercolor" Collection

Hey, Tuesday! Interrupting fairy deadlines with a bit of news: I'm excited and honored to be included in this cheery collection of contemporary watercolorists. The book is beautifully designed and includes some of my esteemed favorites like Becca Statdlander, Sujean Rim, what company! Watercolor hits stores in April. Thanks to the fine folks at Chronicle, and author/curator Leslie Ann Dutcher.





Have a beautiful week, folks!

Wings Warm-Up.

Good morning! (Sidenote: I've just broken my own freelance-rule: walked into the studio in my jammies. Oops.) Oh well, such is January. Everything I've been working on in here is top secret, but since that's no fun, I'll share some warm-up sketches. Here goes:


In the fairy realm I am working in, the author has decided to treat wings as detachable accessories, which is very kind of her considering there is a lot of dressing up and going to balls (wings and gowns-eek). Swimming might be another perfect situation to take advantage...


After drawing her, I realized she might be my own version of Thumbelina (above).

Sneaky sprites. 

Hope you have a lovely week! If you spot a fairy under your nearest toadstool, be sure to report.

Freshest Edge

It's crunchy out. The sun is in your eyes, ice is underfoot. City people hurry by, faces wound in scarves. We are on the freshest edge together, newly whet by winter.

Isn't it exciting? There is hope on this edge, that things can change, that we can shape our own little worlds. It's fresh and clean and everything is new...you've got new ideas, (new socks, maybe), new plans, new hopes. It's a time for travel, opening the eyes (I've been keeping my eyes on this important movement ), learning a language, reading deeply, and dreaming long dreams, interior adventures, interior decorating, prayer, nesting, gathering friends and family to light up the corners.  It flavors your back-to-work tasks with possibility, re-enlivens your livelihood.

My sister, Christa, aptly dubbed it, "home keeping/possible magical worlds season"...YES. (She always says it best.) I like the in-between-seasons, maybe even more than the main events. I think it's because of their quiet power. It's when all the secret work is being done before something is ready to bloom....



As far as seasonal nesting, my eyes always return from break fixed on pattern and color. I've been aiming to surround us in delft blue and Scandinavian pattern. I love how pattern can turn a corner into a "place" with a story of its own. Another domestic-cozy goal has been to create a homemade "hearth" for folks to sit around. We started to bring it to life this week (and escaped a fire emergency!) At least I can pretend it's the real thing. Isn't it neat what a little dancing flame can to a dark room (and cat)?


Right now is also a time of visual starkness. Color and imagination are VERY powerful because of that. The palette here in Quincy is gull-gray, white, and sharp sea blue. Stories are clearer and louder against the scenery. Dream-life seems to mix with real-life too...a winter alchemy. I always dream vividly when the new year begins, too. Do you? The past few nights mine have been full of symbols, adventures, tunnels and good advice from strangers (is it weird to dream of strangers?) Every dream has been focusing around the prospect of "being ready"...(I hope this is a good thing!)  I think it's all part of the humming work that has begun. Here's a doodled symbol from a dream: full of roses.


So Happy New Year, friends! And vivid dreaming too! I hope you are refreshed and ready for it. Can't wait to watch it bloom together, I think it's gonna be a good one.

New England Blood

Ah! December? Where is the time going? How have you all been?

I've been writing my novel (thanks for the encouragement!), revising fairies, heading south for research interviews, and getting lost in journals of people that lived hundreds of years ago. Before the holidays totally consume us, I wanted to quick get this old post up. Because it's all about Almost-Winter in New England, which is one of my favorite times, and it's nearly done already.

During this particular time of year, the land here is enchanted:
(I tried to paint it last week, out the studio window.)
The palette across our land here in New England becomes rich and complex during this season. Out on an echoing walk through the hollow woods you can see mulberries, purples-bruised-to-blacks, plums, poisonous reds on neutrals, rumbling umbers, steely evergreen and that perfect hard-to-mix slate blue sky. It is soggy under your feet, the light is long and a little bit sad, the air is dense and sweet with the smell of leaves turning to earth. You think about the people who have felt home here too, over thousands of years, and everyone, for a moment feels connected and alive. The deciduous trees become ringed kings topped in copper crowns. Forests seem alive with old-fashioned ghosts...and Christmas will settle into the land if you cue a Coventry Carol or two!



At the very edge of night and day, was when we'd love to go out and play in it, wrapped up in old table cloths for "old-fashioned dresses", "stewing" our rotten Halloween pumpkin in the burgundy dark over a flashlight, pretending we were putting up onion grass for the long winter under the deck, being chilled to the bone so when our mom would call us in for soup, it would be an unimaginable luxury...


My sister in Connecticut copper.



I think the season sounds exactly like Goldmund.

I actually wrote and re-wrote this post about a dozen times, because it's nearly impossible for me to talk about my landscape. So, I usually don't. My relationship to the land here is personal and bone-deep. I have entries saved about New England in the summer, the spirit in the land, the seagulls and the green. But I'm always stopped from posting by two things: (1) the belief that no one would want to read about things like seagulls and ocean! and (2) I am always at a loss for words, re: the land. Sometimes something is too beloved to explain.
(If you have read this far already, you should have a copper crown yourself!)

When I view hazy New England hills on a car drive, my reaction is always immediate. It's from the center of my chest. Peace settles through me while I scan the stacked golds and fire-tinged sphere against sphere. Is it having been born here? Having been lulled to sleep in the backseat watching them roll since I was born?  Maybe. I will probably always always live here, I don't think I'd ever be able to part with them (the hills-or the ghosts).



Sometimes just doing a little painting unlocks the language of the land for me, keeping my imagination planted firmly in the cold wet dirt while I write.

Is there a place that bewitches you, where you live?

The fairies have descended...

and Fairy Bell Sisters final art has begun! 
Can you imagine the mess that a flock of fairy sisters (and each with her own pair of wings) might make in your house? Well, imagine it, and you've got my studio for the next few weeks! The music is loud, inky bristol board is everywhere, and if you come to the door, I will greet you in all my sans-make-up-scary-haired-brow-furrowed glory, while whisking my collection of old tea mugs away to the sink, Kathleen Kelly style.

I also become slightly non-verbal in final art mode, it's strange. For days, my eyes and hands converse via line, shape, and value. In my head it sounds a little like this: "WIDE GREY THING, CHALKY EDGE THERE, SPLATTER!, BRING THE DARKS OUT, MUTE WITH OPAQUE, DEFINE LINE." Like a render machine. Am I making sense? No? Have some toast...

 (Fairy fuel)
This coming Saturday, I'll have an excuse to put pants on and remember how to talk: I'll be speaking at Foundation For Children's Books "What's New In Children's Books" with authors I admire, Grace Lin and David Yoo. Details HERE. Would love to see you, come say hello!

Boo!

It is a magical day for black kitties everywhere! Mine is hamming it up over here (juggling pumpkins, growing extra arms...) I hope you have a sweet little Halloween.

October is...

October is a yellow sweater, turtle toenails, and a great big STORY...

♥

Waiting.

Thanks for the encouragement, Jennifer in Wisconsin! It is surely appreciated right now (to be frank and honest). This author/illustrator thing is sometimes a tough business. We don't talk much in the social media sphere about the doubt and bad days and dry spells and all the other delicious mental quandaries we get ourselves into. Presently, my art and writing are like two squabbling (growing) kids over here, after years of being told to "shush" while I worked, they are very fussy and jealous and would both like all of my time, which sometimes lends to making nothing at all. Then I get stuck. 



I got stuck today and called my mom. Besides being the most creative person I know, she is the best listener, someone who will waddle into the thick of it with you (no McCloskey duck pun intended) and make you laugh at yourself. I told her writing my novel and making my picture books just can't happen at once. I told her switching my brain from one to the other is like singing Christmas carols in the springtime and it just won't work. She understood, and suggested something neat. She said that "maybe you just need to properly introduce them to each other." I'll let that sit a while with me tonight. 



I'm also not used to not producing final products at a rapid-fire rate, so this year of stepping back (yes, it has been a year without picture books) has been so vital for me. To remember WHY I make, and what I REALLY REALLY WANT to make. To make like I did when I was a kid, for the fun of it. A year of learning to be patient with myself, and learning that creation comes when you throw expectation out the window and remember JOY. It's tricky, but I have a feeling it gets easier.
In these months I've "raised" (because they really do feel like your kids) a dozen picture book concepts, and a novel that came out of nowhere and needed telling. But this time around, there is no deadline, art director, editor, no agent. It's just me right now. Are the stories worth it? Good enough? Can I do it? Should I go get a job in the city instead? These are questions as creators we will always ask ourselves, I bet.  So there's some honest-to-goodness truth. Thanks for being along for the ride, friends. I'll be at the drawing board (and keyboard), working at the blank white ♥