Newsletter ❖ JULY 2026 (Archive)

August 8, 2026

July 2026

Hey I'm back!

Was gone for a good 2.5 weeks and have been mildly sick for the past few days but it's been a good mental break otherwise. Really helped with an undercurrent of burnout I've been grappling with... haven't traveled like this in over five years so I severely underestimated how creatively healing this kind of thing is.

Gonna summarize my trip a little for those interested, for those here for more art focused stuff though feel free to scroll to the later sections (added headings this time to make this easier to skim).

In any case, let's get started:

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JAPAN

So this trip to Japan was my first proper trip with my partner - long distance really restricted our ability to travel together, and this was only our second ever time flying in the same direction. It was my partner's first time flying that kind of distance (we were on our feet for over 24 hours both directions!), and the last time I was in Japan was for the most part ten years ago. Lots of new things to discover together!

We ended up flying with Cathay and transferring both directions in Hong Kong. I hope to visit Hong Kong properly one day, but the airport is still my favorite out of all the ones I've been in. Food is comforting, the flow going between gates is relatively comfortable, and it's one of the best airports to people watch in.

My partner did a year abroad in Kyoto about eight years ago, so I was relying a lot on her ability to speak Japanese a good portion of this trip. Japan for the most part has gotten more accommodating for a foreigner that doesn't speak the language, especially compared to a decade ago, but there were still noticeable differences between spaces for tourists and spaces that I probably would have never ventured to without someone who knew the language. If/when I do come back, I hope to be a bit more confident with the phrases I did pick up to communicate.

Absolutely not comprehensive quick photo spam.

We hit up Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo following Krish's tour date schedule, with a brief stop in Shizuoka. Like my first time in Japan, I drank a copious amount of ice coffee (being the only thing I could order confidently without needing to translate the menu), and our main observation was how the coffee taste scaled depending on where we were (and honestly, how tourist heavy certain areas have gotten).

Notably, there were definitely less smokers this time around, and spaces that were once pretty defined by that past-time in our memory (arcades and pachinko spots lol) definitely felt the most different - for better or worse. We wandered into a few local cafes that still allowed indoor smoking; our favorite coffees and shop interiors funnily enough happened to be in those spots, quiet but well-maintained nooks that definitely seemed popular with folks who lived there and wanted to chill out with a book and a smoke. Definitely a shame we couldn't stick around for very long because of our poor tolerance for cigarette smoke, but we appreciated the experience.

Fried egg and thick-cut toast at WANDERERS Kyoto.

Shoutout to Ibuki Coffee (Osaka), 珈琲ソワレ (Shizuoka), and Cafe Voleur de Fleurs (Tokyo) for some of our favorite cafe breaks, alongside all the tasty food we had too all across our trip.

Won't bore you with all the details of our trip (followers of my personal IG have already been subject to a billion photo bombs), but if you met up with us and/or dropped by any of Krish's three shows and picked up some merchandise, we deeply appreciate it. I feel like it's been harder than ever keeping in touch and sharing work with international folks, but it's always a pleasure connecting with people old and new over music and art and other cool things.

I cleared about 40+ pages while we were abroad in my sketchbook, a lot of which was spent sketching the cool folks performing at each show. Very gestural stuff, was reminding me how much I need to practice to capture these precious moments. Not the most photogenic sketches, but hope to share those in a future sketchbook PDF.

Thank you for having us, we hope to be back soon.

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[🍒] STICKER CLUB

Probably because I had rhythm games on the brain since we visited a few arcades, but I had this specific mix of Spin Spin Sugar stuck in my head during our trip. The visual in particular I wanted to pay homage to, so that's the theme for this month's sticker.

Been getting back into color pencils and color in general for traditional media, so I made a quick sketch for this concept before lining over it when we got home:

Excited to print this, think the colors and render came out quite nicely.

Thank you to everyone for their patience for the irregular mailing schedule last month. And as usual, a reminder that I have a dedicated feed to track updates on Bluesky!

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FLAMECON

Flamecon is coming up on the 15th next month, so been doing whatever prep I can this month to prepare! Been making a bunch of new merch announcements on Bluesky and Instagram, but a quick summary here too:

- 3 new pick designs (and one misprint, that I will probably be giving out for free at shows), debuted the green ones in Japan!

- 4 new pin sets, designed to be mix-and-matched. A bit of a financially ambitious project, but it's been sitting in the back of my head, so I really wanted to make it real despite how conceptually simple it is on paper. Thank you if you support this one in particular, it's definitely not designed to be profitable lol.

- Blue variant for my Market fish washi tape is now available online

- All my old fanart prints have been retired. Not giving up on fanart, just sick of looking at a lot of those pieces in particular lol. Will be refreshing my print stock now that there's room!

- Also refreshing my sticker stock!

Want to see what else I can get done in this timeframe, but I'm looking for work again at the same time so everything's kind of sharing the same pool of energy. Really enjoy tabling though, so excited to see everyone at the show!

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MISCELLANEOUS