Field Notes: April 2026
2026 April 30
You can find the original newsletter here.
Since I created this newsletter series earlier in the month (thanks for checking this out!), not a ton of updates here since it's been a busy month. A few random side quests and some traditional art experiments mostly. Patreon also merged my subscriber and creator pages this week, so I guess this has put me back at my old username for now. I'll figure that out another time... since I can't really think of anything better!
Life Updates
As springtime finally takes hold here, my random side quests begin. This month, I had the opportunity to volunteer on a soil restoration project on a restricted-access coastal island! We tilled and sifted soil for trash and debris to clear the area for planting native seaside goldenrod, and make more safe areas for nesting seabirds.
Really boring month on the food front. I cut gluten a few weeks ago to figure out some mystery symptoms, and while I do feel better physically I'm also like, nooo! Only time will tell if this is actually helping, or if I can reintroduce. I will say my biggest food win this month was getting a filet of Atlantic salmon on sale for $5, and I pan-fried it so good the skin crunched like the crispest potato chip when I bit into it. I still think about it.
Other than that, I've just been finishing out the semester and preparing for some upcoming conference travel this summer. While I had the opportunity to TA a fun class this semester I am looking forward to my email inbox not blowing up at all times with grade questions.
Creative Updates
I recently made a Carrd landing page for my links/summary of stuff I like. I feel pretty late to the game (this site was all the rage on Twitter back then), but it's a pretty flexible little site builder. Basically, I got sick of all of my links not being consolidated in one space and still don't have the energy to code anything from scratch. I'm still fiddling with the layout, there are too many "aesthetics" I enjoy... usually I trend towards a minimalist layout with sharp pixel art, but I thought I'd try something more earth-y and easy on the eyes this time. Definitely will keep changing over time.
Tomodachi Life coming out halfway through this month really exploded any chance of me making progress on my projects (lol). It's been pretty busy, so my allotted 15 minutes before bed has been going to my TomoLife dailies.
I mentioned in the previous newsletter, I'm really wanting to stretch some long-dormant comic muscles and make a short comic. I've been passively developing an idea I had, so once life lessens its grip I can start sharing designs and other brainstorming work here. It will likely be about repression, intrusive thoughts, and bird women at a terrible job in Antarctica. All themes very within my usual creative toolkit, but I like it for a reason.
Traditional artwise, I'm wanting to learn linocut, so I started practicing with eraser stamps. Not sure why I began with a horseshoe crab, their anatomy is a bit more complicated than I expected. I hope I'll have some more refined prints in the future, because this was fun and therapeutic to carve. I think it'd be awesome to work my way up to larger prints and invest in some fabric ink, and could start to upcycle secondhand clothes or offer pop-ups where people could come stamp whatever they own (old tote bags, etc) with a cool nature-y design. I've always thought about running a "shop" with nature-centric items, but it'd be contradictory to not consider sustainability and production ethics if that was the theme!
I've also done a few acrylic marker on canvas drawings for a few occasions, which was a new experiment. I had the unusual opportunity to see/smell a blooming corpse flower, and the line for the event (since it's a once-a-decade bloom) was hundreds of people deep. But one of the greenhouse staff recognized me from checking out the inflorescence the day before (and the multitude of greenhouse tours I've had to give as a TA over the years lol), and let me skip the line. I painted her a little corpse flower because the line was a 2 hours long wait at that point, so that was clutch.
This month's special creature feature, a mayfly! It felt really special to see one of these and get such a cooperative photograph with my camera, as the adults usually only live about a day.
