On creative homecomings

Sneak peek Tuesday: Vol. 5

Hello there! And welcome to Dandelion Seeds, an illustrated newsletter that is hand-painted and hand-lettered, from my desk to yours.

The night before we left for Norway’s Lofoten Islands two weeks ago, Jose and I made a short bucket list for our trip.

We filled it with the places we’d both loved visiting when we met on the islands in 2016 — favorite beaches and hikes, favorite fishing villages we hoped to return to, and a certain village bakery whose cinnamon rolls we dreamed of tasting again.

But secretly, just between you and me, I would’ve been happy if we didn’t make it back to any of the places on our list.

Because all I wanted to do on Lofoten again was make some art.

My first sketch of Lofoten, created in 2015.

Lofoten is my my favorite place in the world to create.

On my first trip to the islands in early 2015, I was there for just five days, but I spent two snowy mornings sketching the view outside my cabin’s window.

When I returned to Lofoten the next year, in the spring of 2016, I knew better than to go for such a short amount of time. I went for ten weeks, on a kind of self-funded artist’s retreat, to write the first draft of a book I was working on.

I spent four of those weeks in the red wooden artist’s house where Jose and I met, but for the rest of the time, I lived in the village of Stamsund, in a hostel built right on the water. And I spent most of my time in Stamsund in the hostel’s common room — writing and painting during the day, at my favorite spot by the curtained window, and hanging out with Jose and other fellow travelers at night.

Sketching my favorite room on Lofoten in 2016.

And so as I prepared to visit Lofoten for the third time earlier this month, I knew that to be on the islands without a creative project to work on just wouldn’t feel right.

We were only staying for a week, in a small yellow cabin we’d booked at the same hostel in Stamsund. A week wouldn’t be quite long enough to create a new illustrated essay from scratch (as much as I desperately wanted to), but then I realized I already had the perfect project for that amount of time:

The illustrations for The Sounds of Home, our upcoming community edition of Dandelion Seeds.

Each day as Elena napped, and each night after we tucked her into bed, I would walk down the grassy hill from our cabin, carrying my wooden tray of paints with me, and find my way back into the hostel’s common room.

And to be there once again — painting in my favorite spot by the window, where the same red-and-white checkered curtains still hang and where fishing boats still come and go in the harbor outside — felt like every bit of the creative homecoming that I had hoped for.

My own personal Lofoten bucket list was complete.

A long-awaited creative homecoming on Lofoten this year.

During our time on Lofoten, I created five small illustrations for The Sounds of Home, plus a larger painting to serve as the cover artwork for the story.

And the sneak peek I want to share with you today is of the illustration I had the most fun painting — and the one in which I felt the greatest sense of flow.

One evening, while Jose was giving Elena a bath, I realized I had exactly one hour to paint. I decided to paint a loon, as several of you mentioned its stirring call when sharing your sounds of home, and I got right to work.

I quickly laid down the body of the loon in black, before dipping a fine-tipped brush in white acrylic ink and painting the beautiful markings on its back and wings. There was something almost meditative about the process — it felt like recreating constellations, laying down careful rows of stars in an inky sky.

Next week, I can’t wait to begin sharing The Sounds of Home, but for now, I simply wanted to share a few more images from our time on Lofoten — and the little loon who captured my heart there.

Here’s to creative homecomings — in the world and in ourselves,
Candace

With ❤️ from Lofoten