On creative invitations

And a cover reveal for my next illustrated essay.

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

Whenever I’m putting together a new illustrated essay, one of my favorite parts of the whole process is creating the lead image that goes with each story — or what I like to call the cover artwork.

I often come up with the idea for a new cover in close consultation with my husband Jose — who I’m also lucky enough to have as my art director (having an eye for design just seems to go hand-in-hand with being an architect).

Jose in his element, exploring Villa Cavrois in northern France this summer.

But other times, an idea surprises me and arrives all on its own.

I’ll never forget the aha moment I had for the cover of “Home is a Softball Field” — that just as its name implies, home plate turned upside down has the shape of a house.

When I shared the idea with Jose the next day, I felt as proud of myself as Elena is when she completes a little household task all on her own, and that cover is still one of my favorites I’ve created yet for Dandelion Seeds.

I recently started thinking about why I enjoy working on these covers so much. And I realized there are a lot of parallels between the cover artwork for an illustrated essay and the illustrated book covers that I also love creating as an artist.

Whether it’s for a book or essay, Jose says that designing a cover is like designing the façade of a house. It’s the first thing people see; it’s what invites them in.

Every cover feels like a creative invitation: to step into a story, to stay a while, and make yourself at home.

A few of my favorite book covers I’ve illustrated over the past decade.

And so all of this leads me to what I’m most excited to share with you today: the cover for my newest illustrated essay (coming next week 🙌).

It’s a story about small kindnesses, but it’s also a story about language and memory.

As Jose and I started chatting about this cover, he threw out the idea of a notebook, to evoke the journey of learning a new language. And right away, I pictured the classic loose-leaf notebook paper I grew up filling my three-ring binders with.

I thought about adding the horizontal blue lines digitally in Photoshop, but I ended up painting them all by hand, line by slightly-wobbly line — the tip of my paintbrush doing its best to follow along the edge of my ruler.

The lines aren’t perfect, but I kind of love how it turned out, and I hope this cover will be just the thing to invite you into my newest story next week.

See you then!
Candace