today is one long to-do list

Lots of exciting things happening, lots of work on, but I have such a bad memory that things always seem to get left out. So apologies if I was supposed to send you an e-mail or promised to do something; just keep reminding me, I’m being totally lame that way right now. I’m like that Dylan guy in Black Books who makes a jacket out of his receipts instead of filing his taxes.

This morning I was passing through Deptford market and spotted an old hardback Miffy book by Dick Bruna sitting on the top of one of the piles on a table and snatched it up for 50p. It sold that cheap because somone had gone in with a green marker and inked over the characters’ eyes, but I kind of liked it, it’s like a goth Miffy. I was admiring a Miffy postcard in the upstairs animators’ studio the other day, and I couldn’t decide what to draw, so I just did a Bruna tribute piece. The beauty in Bruna’s stuff has a lot to do with its simplicity, so me adding stuff to the picture probably isn’t helping things.

original Bruna page from I can count, and some of this lists on my studio wall

I’ve been listening to Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring on Spotify a lot these days. It’s such a lovely piece and it has that Shaker Simple Gifts tune running through it that reminds me not to make my life too compicated. I remember going to hear it when I was a kid with my dad and a family friend at the Seattle Symphony, with the orchestra accompanied by a photographer’s slide show of Appalachian farmlands. I was really young and kind of bored, but then I looked over at my dad’s friend sitting with us and he was crying because it was so beautiful and I’ll never forget that.