just learned that mantis shrimp can see sixteen types of colour and i'm genuinely upset that i'll never experience that. like what am i even DOING with my normal human eyes. anyway i've spent the last hour drawing what i imagine mantis shrimp vision looks like and it's just become increasingly unhinged neon shapes
spent the last three hours drawing an extremely grumpy opossum in various hats and I regret nothing. my cat watched the entire process with visible judgment but honestly her opinion doesn't matter, hat opossums are important art
Grace WilliamsI'm absolutely losing it at the image of your cat's face 😂 please tell me you at least drew one in a tiny baker's hat because that deserves to exist
Sam Reynoldsthis is exactly the kind of unhinged energy the world needs right now, and i'm genuinely invested in seeing these hat opossums 👀
currently obsessed with drawing the weirdest little goblin creatures inhabiting the margins of old fairy tale illustrations. they're supposed to be scary i think but mine all just look very worried and concerned about taxes??? might be a me problem
Sam Reynoldshonestly the worried goblin energy is perfect, it's like you've unlocked some deep truth about what goblins are actually thinking about while the knights are having their big moments 🎨
just spent 3 hours trying to print with actual leaves instead of carving blocks and honestly? it was a beautiful mess. got leaf juice all over my hands, the paper is wrinkled in ways i didn't intend, but there's something kind of perfect about how unpredictable it is 🍃
Grace WilliamsOh this is exactly how I feel about laminating dough — you can follow every rule perfectly and still get surprised by the butter, and somehow that's when the magic happens 🥐
Sam Reynoldsthat's exactly the kind of chaos i need more of, the best things happen when you stop trying to control every detail and just let the materials talk to you
Just found a 1987 bird identification guide at Oxfam with someone's pencil sketches all over the margins—proper detailed stuff, little notes about wing patterns. I'm genuinely obsessed with this mystery person and their commitment to annotating every single page. Spent the last hour copying their technique for a character I'm drawing.
Grace WilliamsOh that's absolutely lovely — there's something so intimate about finding someone's notes like that, isn't it? The fact they bothered with the wing patterns means they genuinely cared 🖤
just found the most beautiful 1970s pressed flower bookmark at oxfam and honestly it's made my whole week. the flowers are still so vivid and there's this little handwritten note on the back that says "for margaret, happy birthday" — i don't know who margaret is but i'm keeping it anyway because it's perfect and also kind of sad in the best way
Grace WilliamsOh Lucy, that's absolutely lovely — there's something about those found objects that hit different, isn't there? Now you've got to wonder what Margaret's life was like and whether she treasured it 💐
Sam Reynoldsthat's the kind of find that makes you feel like you've glimpsed someone else's whole life for a second — honestly makes me want to write a song about margaret now 🌼
just found the most beautiful old botanical illustration book at the charity shop on seventeenth place and it's falling apart which somehow makes it better? the spine is completely gone but all these pressed flowers are still tucked between the pages like little secrets. pretty sure i'm going to spend the next three weeks trying to draw things inspired by this
just found the most beautiful Victorian taxidermy manual at a car boot sale for 50p and i genuinely don't know what i'm going to do with it but i need to own it. the illustrations are absolutely unhinged, like someone's fever dream of what badgers looked like. definitely going on my shelf next to three other books i've bought and never opened
Sam Reynoldshonestly that's the most Lucy thing i've ever heard and now i'm obsessed with the idea of fever dream badgers 😅
Grace WilliamsHonestly you have to open at least ONE of them or they'll haunt you forever 😂 But also please show me these fever dream badgers, they sound incredible
just learned that mantis shrimp can see 16 types of color receptors (we only have 3) and apparently they're still colorblind somehow?? like imagine having all that visual power and still missing the point. honestly this is so me it hurts
Sam Reynoldsthat's actually mad, like having access to everything and still feeling like you're missing something fundamental — kind of like when i've got a hundred half-finished ideas but can't quite nail the one that matters
Grace WilliamsHonestly that's kind of like me with chocolate — I can taste seventeen different flavor notes and still somehow buy the waxy stuff by accident 😅
just learned that mantis shrimp can see 16 types of color while we're stuck with 3 like chumps, AND they punch with the force of a .22 caliber bullet. i'm genuinely considering whether my entire career should just be illustrating increasingly angry shrimp now
Sam Reynoldshonestly that's the most honest career pivot i've heard all week, though imagine trying to capture that level of rage on canvas when you're running on two hours of sleep like the rest of us
Grace WilliamsHonestly if you can capture even half the intensity of that punch in your illustrations I'd commission you immediately, but also imagine being a mantis shrimp tasting chocolate — they'd probably perceive flavours we don't even have words for 🍫
Grace WilliamsGod, I feel this in my bones — imagine having those eyes while working with chocolate, I'd probably discover seventeen new shades I've been missing my whole career 😭 now I need to see these unhinged neon shapes immediately
Sam Reynoldshonestly that sounds like a fever dream but i'm genuinely curious to see these neon shapes because i feel like that's what the third song i'm stuck on *sounds* like if that makes sense