Your dollar goes farther when you buy from individual makers and small businesses. Supporting independent makers means putting money in the pockets of working people. With this, not only can they pay their bills, grow their families (plant and fur babies included!), support their communities—they can bring us more of the beautiful and innovative products that we all enjoy. It’s a win-win-win!

With that, THANK YOU for supporting small businesses. Now, let’s shop!

Little Bird Apparel

Offers: Baby Clothes

Founded by moms Kelsey and Dina—and featuring Dina’s beautiful artwork—this brand is all about sweet designs & cozy fabrics that make everyday moments a little more magical. Shop the collections at littlebirdapparel.com.

Shop Little Bird Apparel

Rio Soléy

Offers: Art Prints, Handmade Magnets

Thoughtfully designed home decor inspired by Rio’s appreciation for languages, culture, and simplicity. Shop Rio’s collections at riosoley.com

Shop Rio Soléy

Liz Volpi

Offers: Art Prints, Stickers, Pins, Cards

The shop of yours truly! Colorful pins, art prints, greeting cards, and more to bring a little whimsy and fun into your world. Shop at lizvolpi.com/shop

Shop Liz Volpi

Mango Illustrated

Offers: Stationery, Stickers, Greeting Cards, Accessories—great gifts for Swifties!

Playfully profound stationery and gifts inspired by artist Katie’s love of all things purple, pop culture, girlhood, and having Taylor’s albums on endless repeat. Shop at mangoillustrated.com.

Shop Mango Illustrated

By Yessie Ortiz

Offers: Stickers, Small Gifts

Cute, colorful stickers that brighten your day and art that celebrates her Mexican-American Heritage. Yessie’s goodies are all about celebrating the simple joys in life and her culture. Shop Yessie’s Etsy.

Shop By Yessie Ortiz

Haleyum

Offers: Bandanas/Scarves, Art Prints, Gift Wrap, Greeting Cards, Tees

Accessories and home decor inspired by Haley’s love of bold florals and mid-century art—infused with a bit of witchiness. Shop Haley’s Etsy.

Shop Haleyum

Cecilia Battaini

Offers: Home Decor, Accessories

Dreamy, drawn worlds centered in nature define Cecilia’s aesthetic. She crafts all her designs with color pencils, giving each piece a tactile and airy quality.

Cecilia licenses her art to other companies, so your support ensures that she earns royalties. Check out her collab with Papirværk, Little Sticker Boy, and Artsy Mats (all pictured above). Visit her website for more ways to shop.

Brightrose Studio

Offers: Stickers, Art Prints, Greeting Cards, Home Goods

Artist Ari creates bright, whimsical, and joyful illustrations printed on everyday items to make you smile—or gift a smile to someone else. Shop Ari’s catalog at brightrosestudio.com.

Shop Brightrose Studio

Sharon Fruit Design

Offers: Stickers, Home Goods

Sharon designs home and kitchen goods inspired by Jewish culture, Florida wildlife, and the natural world around us. Shop Sharon’s Etsy.

Shop Sharon Fruit Design

Dina Riddle Design

Offers: Home Goods

Beautifully designed home decor to brighten any space, inspired by Dina’s love of all things wild and whimsical.

Dina licenses her art to other companies, so your support ensures that she earns royalties. Check out her collab with Bed Bath & Beyond and with Walmart (all pictured above).

Lauren Turner Designs

Offers: Gift Wrap, Home Goods, Stickers

Lauren designs bright, colorful gifts that are sure to bring whimsy and joy into your home. Shop the collection on Lauren’s Etsy.

Shop Lauren Turner Designs

Gemstones 4 Wellness

Offers: Handmade Jewelry, Decor

A Reiki-certified artisan, Mary Sunshine carefully assembles the gemstones of every bracelet, pendant, and earring for optimal energy-balancing and healing. Her intentionality ensures all recipients receive healing energies of peace, love and joy. Shop Mary Sunshine’s Etsy.

Shop Gemstones 4 Wellness

Meghann Makes

Offers: Greeting Cards, Calendars, Art Prints, Stickers, Apparel

Meghann designs a diverse array of items to fill your home and everyday life with joy. Her core belief is that art should be accessible, functional, and a source of daily inspiration. Shop Meghann’s Etsy.

Shop Meghann Makes

Courtney Beyer

Offers: Stickers, Stationery, Pins, Art Prints, Ornaments

Courtney’s delightful illustrations bring her line of stationery and gifts to life, spanning themes of celebration to conservation. Bonus: her products are all made from 100% post-consumer waste! Shop Courtney’s collections at courtneybeyerdesign.com/shop.

Shop Courtney Beyer Design

Julie M Studios

Offers: Art Prints, Originals, Paint Kits

Julie’s mission is to infuse life with color through joyful, intentional design that sparks connection, celebrates creativity, and elevates the everyday. Shop Julie’s catalog at www.juliemstudios.com/collections

Shop Julie M Studios

That’s it for this year’s Shop Small Guide! THANK YOU so much for supporting independent makers and small businesses. If you have a moment, please share this post with a friend! Sharing helps get more eyes on these businesses. It’s an easy (and free!) way to help out!

If you’d like to see more from me, sign up to my newsletter, Art & Fable. I share updates from my illustration/design studio, industry insights, helpful guides (like this one) and more. Sign up below!

Art & Fable

Illustrator & graphic designer Liz Volpi-Impastato shares her work and lukewarm takes about freelancing, storytelling, and the ever-changing creative industry.

By Liz Volpi Impastato

AND, if you would like to be considered for a future edition of this guide, please fill out this Google form! I would love to check out your work.

Thanks again and see ya next time!
-Liz

How goes it? We Austinites have been happily dawning our fall attire in the face of slightly colder air. As soon as the weather dips into the 70s (~22-26°C) we’re like… it’s hoodie season! Lol. But then a day later, near 90° temps return to inevitably dash our joys. So I guess we are still going back and forth between that right now.

Other than occasionally breaking out my “winter” clothes, I’ve finally drafted up the Shop Small Guide that I mentioned a few times earlier this year. It features the online stores of 15 talented artists offering unique, creative gifts that are perfect for the upcoming holidays. Expect it to hit your inboxes ahead of Thanksgiving next week! If you are knees deep in holiday stuff by then, no sweat. I’ll have plenty of reminders in following newsletters. (:

On the studio front, I’ve been listening to a lot of Clams Casino as I work, taking breaks to garden here and there, and tying up loose ends with some projects. I’d say I’m generally existing between the relief that a busy period has evaporated and the panicked anticipation of a slow period taking its place. Sketching holiday art has kept me busy, snapshots of which you may view below.

Work in Progress: Holiday Cards

Behold, the aforementioned sketches! As I look at them, I’m realizing that I truly have an affinity for personified animals. I never intentionally decided to make “youthful” artwork, but so much of what I enjoy creating does lean that way. I think exposure to the talking animals of fables and fairytales really locked something into my brain 30+ years ago, lol.

I’ll keep you updated on how these are progressing as I move into color. Hopefully I can turn them into greeting cards for licensing. Fingers crossed!

Shop Sale

Obligatory reminder that several of my shop items are on sale! I’m making room for new pieces, so a bunch of Art Prints and Greeting Cards are 40-50% off. Grab them while you can! Also, newsletter subscribers get an additional 10% discount off - use code FABLEFRIEND10

Visit My Shop

Cool Stuff by Friends

• My sister started a business called Forward Nursing, in which she shares educational resources perfect for new nurses and nursing school students. Her guides are detailed, written in easy-to-understand terms, and steeped not only in a bunch of research but her experience as an ICU nurse for over 2 years.

• My dear friend Dina Riddle has launched a baby clothing brand with her friend Kelsey called Little Bird Apparel. As an auntie-to-be, I’ve been stocking up on their goodies for upcoming baby showers! You may even see their work in the pending Shop Small Guide ;)

Studioworks Free Trials

I have free trials of Studioworks to give away, so please take them!

If you missed my spiel from last time (sorry to repeat this otherwise!), Studioworks is an invoicing and business management system for creatives founded by lettering extraordinaire, Jessica Hische. I joined earlier this year and got Founding Member status, which thus bestowed upon me a referral link that you may use to try the product for FREE for a month. If you decide to convert to a paying member, you help me out by giving me a month for free, too (thank you!). The company doesn’t do free trials any other way, so if you’ve been curious about their product, please sign up!

Try Studioworks For Free!

That’s it for this week! Thank you for being here and, as always, feel free to hit reply and say hello :) Catch you next time!

Au revoir,
-Liz

I arrive at your inbox like bee re-emerging from a two-and-a-half month stent toiling in the hives. I have been SWAMPED, y’all. A few dreamy projects have graced my desk all at once (which I am excited to tell you about in a month or two) and thus my weekdays have been filled to the brim with client work—and some occasional spill over into the weekends. It has been a LOT, possibly enough to make up for a rather slow early summer this year. Feast or famine, I guess!

Barring my occasional peek into local reddit subs for the hot Austin goss, I’ve been holding strong in my avoidance of social media. Every time I complain about the algo, the moguls, the slop (AI- or human-generated!), etc. etc. I feel exactly 100 years old. Godspeed if you’re continuing to brave their toxic depths! I salute you for real.

Now that I’ve limited my doom-or-otherwise scrolling through the Internet, I have empty pockets of time in the evenings that I fill with reading actual books. Wild, right? I’ve let my brain melt into the pages of Youngmi Mayer’s memoir I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying, Jenny Williamson’s historical romantasy Enemy of My Dreams, and now Sally Mann’s Art Work. The former two have bestowed upon me a much needed escapism, to which I fervently cleave.

Anyway, I hope you’ve been well during these last several weeks (all things considered)! Can you believe Halloween is tomorrow?! My whole family is going as Shrek, including our dog. Why coordinate three different characters when you can all go as the same one?

Time to move on to some art!

Mini Coloring Book

One of the few projects I worked on this past June was a mini, superhero-themed coloring book for Raising Cane’s. I think this puts me at coloring-related project number five, maybe six? Feels like this is my area of expertise at this point, lol.

I’m still in the process of getting this and a few other projects prepped to share on my portfolio, but I hope you enjoy this little dose of super-Cane! If you’re itching for more coloring content (perhaps??), you can check out my portfolio.

View My Portfolio!

Studioworks Free Trial!

By now you may have heard that fellow designer, Jessica Hische, launched an invoicing and business management system for creatives called Studioworks. I’ve been using the beta version since I dumped Quickbooks earlier this year and it’s been great! I super appreciate a small tech business (feels like an oxymoron?) that values providing a quality product for the long-haul over scaling-up into the oblivion of enshittification, or for an eventual acquisition. The big draw is that Studioworks charges no additional transaction fees (unlike Quickbooks et al.), so you get to keep more of the money you earn.

As a Founding Member, I get a referral link which allows you to try the product out for FREE for a month. Woo! If you decide to convert to a paying member, you also help me out by giving me a month for free, too. Double-woo! The company doesn’t do free trials any other way, so if you’ve been curious about their product please sign up with the link below. I recommend it!

Try out Studioworks

Ok well I guess that’s enough for now. I hope you have a great Halloween, if you observe! If not, happy Friday in advance :) As always, feel free to reply to say hello and thank you for being here!!

Ciao ciao,
-Liz

I’ve been in head-down mode busily working on a few cool projects, so I don’t have much art prepared to share today. What I DO have is an invitation to the upcoming Back To School Summit, in which I will be on a panel talking about the power of collaboration.

Two of my dear friends, Alisa Singh and Lauren McConnell, are hosting the event in what would I describe as an alt-social media space called the CCC (aka the Creative Connection Collective). It’s kind of like a more robust version of Slack, filled with a bunch of resources and cool creatives sharing their work and guidance. IMO, it is a much chiller way of staying in touch with creative friends than on Instagram, and the added bonus of being able to share and receive professional guidance is invaluable.

Once you sign up for the Summit, you’ll get an invite to join the CCC!

Sign Up for Back To School!

This summit is actually something I have been encouraging Alisa and Lauren to do for months now (my pushiness is part of my collaboration style I guess, lol). It lines up well with a challenge that Lauren hosted last year also called “Back to School”, which had a kind of Zoom-enabled summer camp vibe. I imagine this will be equally fun! The full agenda is listed below.

Learn more about Back to School!

Anyway, I hope to see you there! You can catch me speaking in the panel discussion Wednesday, September 10th at 12 pm EST. Otherwise, I’ll likely be lurking in the background of other presentations - lol.

Tot ziens!
-Liz

My purpose in sharing it is to simply provide information: I tried this, it yielded that. I believe it is important to test out the tools we rely on to protect our artwork from image generators, instead of blindly trusting that they will work as intended in every situation.

But to be very clear: I am not sharing this to discourage artists from protecting their work against AI. I am sharing this to encourage artists to interrogate their tools.

Unfortunately, sometimes testing things out means feeding our art to image generators — a thing that many artists want to avoid. That’s fair. It is up to your discretion if you’d like to submit one or two of your pieces to an image generating system for the sake of testing. If you do test these systems, it can be helpful to share what you find with other artists who don’t want to freely give their pieces to an image generator database. This is why I am sharing here. I tried this tiny, limited experiment. This is what I found.

You may find that Glaze yields better results in protecting your style — that’s great! Please share that! Maybe you want to use Glaze because even a minimal amount of protection against AI is worth it for you—love that! I am never going to shame you for trying to protect your art however you can. I am also never going to shame a person who chooses not to use Glaze to protect their art. It is wiser for us to treat each other with kindness and grace, even if we have different viewpoints on this. It makes our community of artists stronger.

Anyway, thank you for being here. End of edit. :)

Hiii!

I’m coming off the heels of a successful and somewhat spicy talk centered around artists and AI. If you missed it, the main point was that understanding the limitations, impacts, news and etc. surrounding this technology empowers you to effectively defend your choice to limit AI use in your workflow. We had a great discussion about practical use cases for AI, having boundaries with it, and educating clients about the copyright issues surrounding it. You can access the slides in my resources hub if you’re interested—there are plenty of links to a bunch of sources and further reading.

Anyhoo, today I am sharing an experiment I ran using Chat GPT and a program called Glaze a month or so ago. I wanted to see how effective Glaze is at protecting my style against AI, so read on if you’re interested in seeing how that went! If not, I will have more art to share with you next edition. :)

Can Glaze Protect Your Art From AI?

Until a few months ago I hadn’t paid much attention to AI. In fact, I would love to ignore it, but its impact on the creative field makes that aim difficult (and I now have an obsession with reading about it). AI generated rip-offs abound, jobs requiring “AI-native” abilities flood online boards, and opportunities for human artists shrink as the masses slurp the AI slop. Grr!

But wait! Have you heard about this thing called Glaze? It’s this program from the University of Chicago that you download, drop an image into, and then it spits out a replication of your image that’s supposedly difficult for AI to imitate. Its goal is to act as a protection for an artist’s style.

I wanted to know how well Glaze could protect a piece of my art against Open AI’s DALL·E. So, I initiated a mini experiment. Could DALL·E replicate my style from a Glazed image? The results were… underwhelming.

Some Details about Glaze

To back up a bit, I’ll show you what the Glaze interface looks like. There are two toggles: one that adjusts the intensity of changes added to the image, one that adjusts the render quality.

For my experiment, I chose a fairly simple, flat design and dropped it into Glaze. Settings: high intensity, default render quality.

The Glazed output had some pretty obvious distortion in the central part of the image, which might go unnoticed when shared at small sizes. However, on a portfolio site where you want the work to display large and really look its best, that’s a bit problematic.

Nonetheless, I had a Glazed and an un-Glazed version of the same image. I was ready for testing.

Testing Glaze with ChatGPT/DALL·E

I dropped the image with the Glaze cloak into ChatGPT, which generates images using the DALL·E engine. The text prompt was as follows:

in this style, create an image of a bottle of hot sauce with a label stating “I got the hots for you”, surrounded by a chili pepper plant

Below is the image Chat GPT served up in response:

I don’t think it did a very good job of replicating the style, but I think you could argue that—despite referencing a Glazed image—yes it replicated the style of the source. However, the image contains some well-known pitfalls of AI imagery, namely misspelled words and floating / disconnected items.

I should mention that ChatGPT seemed to struggle loading this image, and I’m unsure if that relates to Glaze or not. The murky grey box where the generated image was supposed to appear had a little “copy” button underneath. I copy-pasted it into the text box and finally viewed it.

Testing the Unglazed Control

Would ChatGPT/DALL·E produce an image without the spelling or continuity errors when referencing an un-Glazed image? Could it develop a more interesting interpretation of the style? I opened a new chat window and dropped in the same text prompt with the un-Glazed reference image. This is what it served up:

I gotta say, I find this rendering no more interesting than the first—though this does have correct spelling and a bit better continuity.

To take this experiment a bit further, I requested the following modification in both chats:

Can you modify this image to include chili pepper flowers in the foliage?

Things got a little more interesting this time.

At this point, all the flaws are typical of AI—Glaze or no Glaze. Spelling is still wrong in the left image. Both images have disjointed peppers and pieces that are oddly joined. The ladybug in the right image just looks scary? Just hot, sloppy garbage all around.

Conclusion

Well… sadly, I did not find the current version of Glaze effective at protecting my particular style, though it may warrant more tests. If Glaze can consistently produce spelling errors in AI replications, I’ll totally use it on lettering pieces before sharing on Substack, etc. Otherwise, I’m not very impressed with how it holds up against the current version of DALL·E.

Maybe Glaze is more effective against other image-to-image generators, or works best when corrupting a full data set for training. I’d be super interested to know if you’ve had better luck with it protecting your art!

I guess, to end on an optimistic note: even though Glaze didn’t protect my style as much as I hoped it would (in this one mini experiment), I found the AI output to be soooo subpar. It reminded me of all the choices artists make as we create: details, exaggerations, unexpected colors… all the things that we test and iterate on as we sculpt our designs and imbue them with aspects of our personalities. You can see the care that goes into the work, and it sets human art—REAL art—apart. I crave human artistry more than I ever have!

So, anyway, I hope you keep creating and you keep sharing—whether you Glaze or not. There’s also Nightshade and Mist to try—and I’m sure plenty others. If you’ve had luck with them, let me know!

Hasta luego,

-Liz :)

P.S. (slightly unrelated) - If you need an AI image detector, check out this review of the top 8! Super informative.

I’ve been busily writing a talk about artists and AI over here, which is kind of hilarious because my credentials on AI are mostly that I read a lot. But I guess if tech CEOs can assert their products are more reliable and capable than proven, I can declare myself an expert in my new special interest. Lol!

I think above all, the more informed artists are about this technology, the more we can thoughtfully critique it and defend our creative processes—as well as protect our copyrighted materials and personal data. My aim is to give some critical perspective and share some A.I. related news stories that might have flown under your radar (if you aren’t constantly reading about this stuff like me).

So come vent, ask questions, and share how you’ve been navigating this era. I named my talk “Let’s Talk About Bots, Baby!” because my brain is poisoned with pop culture references and I want to keep things light. It’s an hour long call and begins at 11 am CDT on August 20, hosted on Zoom. Pop in / out whenever. You can register here or at the button below. Hope to see you there :)

Register to attend my talk on AI

Ok, now onto a new-ish project!

Bilingual Speechie Flashcards

I love this project so much!! Now that I’ve (finally) photographed samples, I can introduce to you these flashcards that I illustrated for Bilingual Speechie last year.

So, if you don’t know about Bilingual Speechie, it’s the brainchild of Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) Liliana Diaz-Vazquez. She founded the company with a mission to bring more inclusive and engaging speech therapy resources into the world, with a focus on equity for bilingual children.

For this deck, Liliana collaborated with fellow SLP, Valentina Gil, who developed it to follow the phonological intervention method called the Cycles Approach. These particular cards focus on initial consonant deletion—helping bilingual kids who have the tendency to skip pronouncing consonants at the start of words.

I developed 35 spot illustrations for this set, featured across the included 35 flashcards. I also designed the packaging to align with existing Bilingual Speechie flashcard sets.

I truly, truly cannot say enough positive things about Liliana, Valentina, and Bilingual Speechie overall. Not only are these cards helpful to bilingual kids in need of cycles intervention, but they are also helpful for English-only speakers who have a curiosity about learning Spanish, and vice versa. If you’d like to purchase these or other learning materials from Bilingual Speechie, check out their website!

Visit Bilingual Speechie

For more on this project, check out my portfolio site. And if you have an educational resource or game you need art for, get in touch! Whatever your idea—big or small—just shoot me an email at liz@lizvolpi.com and we can get started.

View full portfolio project →

Reminder: Shop Clearance

Over at the shop, I’m clearing out art prints and greeting cards to make room for other items. Art Prints are 40% off and Greeting Cards are 50% off.

Greeting cards are perfect for sending love notes friends and family! Perhaps a needed form of personal connection amid an increasingly isolated world. Art prints are great for bringing color to offices, homes, or a kiddo’s room—transforming bland spaces into havens for inspiration. Peek into my shop sale to check them out!

BONUS! Art & Fable subscribers get a secret special 10% off code: FableFriend10

Shop the Sale!

Shop Small Guide is in the works!!

Submit your shop to my Shop Small Guide, even if you only sell a few items!! Some of y’all have already submitted (thank you!), and now I have a list that I’m starting to build out content for. I might be reaching out to a few of you to clarify content as I build this thang in the coming weeks. Please submit if you haven’t already!

Submit your business!

Well, I suppose that is enough for this edition. Next edition is slated to send the day after my A.I. talk, so I’ll be sharing some related information about an experiment I did with ChatGPT / DALL•E and a little program called Glaze.

As always, thank you for reading! And if you have questions or want to say hi, just hit reply. Don’t be a stranger!

Hasta luego,
-Liz

I’m hot off the heels of re-reading an article from Creative Boom which included some truly wild quotes from creative leaders as they pondered whether “the age of the specialist is over in creative agencies.” The answer is no—not in agencies nor elsewhere. This feels a bit silly to say, but it is still important for workers to have areas of expertise. However, to survive in this current shrinking economy dominated by companies that undercut human labor and pathologically push AI (slop) like a Reagan-era caricature of a drug dealer, it is wise to be nimble—even entrepreneurial. But that feels like a survival tactic for uncertain times, not the wholesale death of specialization at the hands of a new creative-generalist era.

To be fair, some of the creative leaders quoted in Creative Boom’s article seem aligned with that perspective, but the author uncritically quotes others who present the situation in a hilariously disingenuous manner. Take Simon Manchipp, founding partner at London-based agency SomeOne, who claims the following:

“In 2025, AI can do the doing. Faster. Cheaper. It is more consistent than Steve in the corner with his ‘niche mastery of kerning’. So, just being good at one thing? Not enough. But being useful across things? Very attractive.”

Not to be all Natasha Lyonne in Pokerface, but this whole statement is some bullshit. Kerning is not a specialization. Every graphic designer is expected to know how to kern letters. It would be like saying that applying a bandage is a specialization of nursing, that we hired nurse Steve in the corner to do nothing but apply bandages. What are you talking about?! What designer is only good at kerning, Simon? When has only doing one extremely specific task ever been more appealing than broadly knowing how to design across multiple applications? Never!

To be clear, specialization in the field of graphic design is something like brand design or packaging. Just because a designer focuses on branding doesn’t mean they can’t also design for a brochure, a website, a soda can. Additionally, having a sister-skill like animation, photography, coding, or illustration has always been encouraged of graphic designers. This is not new!

And to poke one more hole in his statement: AI systems are not exactly consistent, nor are they adequate or suited for every creative task. I’m sure many of you who have experimented with AI are very aware of this!

But perhaps even more abysmal is this explanation for why creative generalists are gaining such appeal:

“The driving forces behind this shift are multiple and converging. Budgets are tightening, forcing agencies to seek creatives who can ‘hop from task to task,’ as Barrington Reeves, creative director at Too Gallus, puts it.”

When budgets tighten, teams shrink. Thus, the work of 2 or more people often falls on the shoulders of a singular human who “hops from task to task” as they absorb the job of another person for the pay of one. But I guess we are rebranding overworking an employee as “the emergence of the creative generalist”? To be fair (and balanced), the author does call this an unfair expectation in the next sentence, though without further elaborating on that point of critique.

I suppose I bring this up because… wtf?! I feel compelled to defend the creative worker in the face of not just this article, but the broader conversation about our industry changing. For the record, you don’t have to abandon your expertise. You don’t have to embrace AI. Being overworked is not a feature of a new era, it’s a failure of management—perhaps even a symptom of a larger failing of capitalism (gasp!). And it’s ok to bravely point that out. We don’t have to accept being gaslit by people like Simon Manchipp, who are quick to misrepresent and devalue our labor. We are creatives: we are clever, we are innovative. We can pivot and stay true to our values. We are worth the money! Things are hard right now, but they won’t be like this forever.

And to be clear, Creative Boom is typically a lovely publication that covers often overlooked areas of our industry. They just missed the mark on this one for me. Perhaps this U.S. American gal can only take so much disingenuous bullshit from an uncritical media landscape before she explodes!

Shop Update: Clearance Sale

In other news, it’s time to update my shop. I’ve been both scoping out new products to design for and slowly amassing a mini-originals collection that will eventually see the world of online commerce. In the meantime, however, I’m clearing out the old to make way for the new with 40% off Art Prints and 50% off Greeting Cards for the foreseeable future. Art & Fable subscribers get an additional 10% discount on anything and everything in my shop with the code FableFriend10 (!!) Please consider supporting my lil’ shop!

View my Online Sale! →

And with that, I must bid you adieu for now. Truly I hope my little rant validated something for you, or at the very least was entertaining.

Also, if you have an online shop that you’d like me to consider adding to the shop small guide I am working on, please share it with me here!

As always, thank you for reading and supporting my work.

じゃあね!
-Liz :)

How goes it? Tbh, I’ve been trying to keep myself from crying as more details about the nearby floods emerge here in Central Texas. I’m very lucky to say that my family and I are safe. However, if you or anyone you know is in need of aid, the Texas Tribune wrote an article about where you can receive it. That same article includes a list of places where you can donate - I’ve linked to a couple at the end of this newsletter.

On a lighter note, I have been thinking quite a lot about divestment—particularly from big ol’ corporations. Their power and ubiquity make them hard to avoid, so no shade to folks who keep their Prime accounts. And, hey… I too enjoy a trip to Taco Bell. But my money makes a much bigger impact when shopping at small businesses, and I’ve been musing about how to get more eyes on small shops that deserve love (and money)! Thus, I am presently creating a Shop Small Guide.

If you have a small shop that operates mostly or partly online, I would love to hear from you - even if you only sell a few items or services. I’d like to collect shop links in one newsletter so it’s easy to share and reference. If you have an online shop (website or Etsy/Spoonflower/etc) that you’d like me to consider promoting, please fill out the Shop Small Guide Submission form.

Submit Your Business!!

Ok, onto some work updates!

New Work: Fiesta San Antonio Medals

Fiesta is basically a two-week party in April where parades and cultural events are held across San Antonio. Traditionally, businesses produce collectible medals and sell them during Fiesta season to raise money for local non-profits. I designed one for Raising Cane’s to sell across their San Antonio restaurants, and they were featured on the local news (?!)

Journalist Christen Urban called my medal design “gorgeous” and “adorable”— and yes, this segment was sponsored by Raising Cane’s… but I think she meant it?! Maybe it’s my millennial brain not understanding the modern world, but this somehow feels like more of an accomplishment than getting 10,000 likes. Probably because I know my boomer parents would be more impressed with a 2 minute long local news segment about something I designed than they would be about anything on Instagram. Am I stuck in 2009? Anyway, you can watch the segment here!

I really wanted to get one of these medals, but you have to be in-restaurant to purchase them and I wasn’t making the 2 hour drive to SA. But… I’ve been keeping my eyes on that second-hand market lol. You can check out more about this project on my brand spanking new Cane’s Fiesta Medal portfolio page.

Cane's Fiesta Medal Portfolio Page

Well, I don’t have much else to share this week - thank you for being here!

Please consider donating to the flood relief efforts here in Central Texas. I really can’t overstate how devastating these floods have been, and the government response at all levels has been wanting. Every time I see photos, I’m reminded of what it was like living through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (I’m originally from the New Orleans area). It’s going to take a long time for people to rebuild.

Hands Off Central TX Mutual Aid is collecting donations—focusing on aid not already being met by churches, the National Guard, and local government. GoFundMe has set up a page featuring several fundraisers for local families and individuals. The Texas Tribune has a list of other local organizations bringing relief to areas affected by the floods.

Thanks again for being here, and quadruple thanks for donating.

Catch ya next time :)
-Liz

I hope your June has been going fabulously thus far. Over here I’ve been on the Cold Email Outreach train, which I realized three seconds ago abbreviates to C.E.O. (?!) I mean, it does feel like some highly executive shit, as it requires the criminally underutilized values-and-numbers part of my brain—or at least the “convincing you to invest in me” part.

One of the hardest endeavors in C.E.O. is finding contacts. I’ve tried a lot of options and my favorite right now is Apollio.io, shared by my friend Jessica Cao. It has a lot of functions, 90% of which I do not know how to use yet, some blocked by a paywall. But the free version helps you find company contacts—names, emails, roles—with a higher success rate (in my experience) than simple Googling or using sites like hunter.io. If you’re on your own C.E.O. journey, I recommend trying it.

A Raising Cane’s Design Round-Up

On to the fun stuff: art! I have been hoarding these projects in my Meta-free Internet corners for a while and I need to tell y’all about them.

Raising Cane’s NYC Retail

This project is a couple years old now, but it did take me that long to photograph all my samples and share it in my portfolio. In short: I created a bunch of designs for Raising Cane’s to use across their NYC-themed merch, exclusively available at their flagship Times Square restaurant. T-shirts, keychains, hoodies, stickers, postcards, pins—my art got used on it all. I also illustrated a NYC-themed coloring book for the collection (but I’ve had that on my site for ages now).

View more Cane's NYC Retail

I feel compelled to mention: they had a huge event during the 2023 grand opening wherein DJ Chantel Jeffries played multiple sets, including one in which she wore a button-down I designed. (!!!) There is truly no gratification for my rotted-out brain like seeing a celebrity within 5 feet of something I crafted.

Cane & Friends: Coloring & Activity Book

In a very Highlights-themed project, I illustrated and designed a small activity book for Cane’s last year, which I believe they produced for giveaways at various marketing activations. I went with activities like picture search, word scramble, how-to-draw instructions, connect-the-dots… you know, the classics.

It would be cool to expand on this eventually and see it available for retail (so I could buy like 20 and distribute them to every youth I know) but we shall see. If you have witnessed these irl (I still haven’t), please send me a pic!!

View the Cane's Activity Book

Raising Cane’s x Houston Rodeo Shirt

Ok, last one! Earlier this year, Houston hosted their annual Livestock Show and Rodeo, which Cane’s sponsored. They asked me to design a rodeo-themed shirt for their local Crew, to which I obviously responded ‘yes!’ Any savvy lettering artist would recognize this as an opportunity to draw a lasso-themed script.

I don’t know what it is about a string-adjacent script that gets us letterers all excited, but we love it. Of course, I did have to provide a backup option (as we are often asked to do), but Cane’s opted for the rope script (woo-hoo!). The final shirt was produced in brown, though I still really like the initial blue color scheme. You can view the full project on my portfolio via the below button.

More about Cane's Rodeo Shirts

In other news… Cool Stuff to Click On

• This website that lets you compare the true size of countries across the globe. Turns out maps have been lying to me all my life about the size of Russia!

• A reminder that we have the power to create trends with our hands.

• This podcast series about how an empire ends. Maybe “cool” isn’t the right descriptor for this subject matter, but I love this podcast and I’ve been waiting for a series like this from them. Terrifyingly relevant and brilliantly illuminating.

Well, that wraps it up for this week. If you are also on an outreach journey, I’d love to know what tools you use. And if you know of any businesses in need of merch or activity book art, holler at me!

As always: feel free to reply with questions, comments, or just to say hello. It’s great to hear from y’all!

Hasta luego,
Liz (:

Hope everything has been going stupendously for you over the last two weeks. Over here I’ve been tying up loose ends on some projects and exploring old haunts during a brief trip to Dallas.

This relaxed change of pace afforded me some time to visit with friends, do a little outreach, and catch up on creative industry tea—I mean news. Which brings me to our catalysts for this week’s slightly unconventional newsletter: AI-related drama in the UK Parliament and a recent article about contracts, copyright, and AI image harvesting published by It’s Nice That.

Can artists get a little R.E.S.P.E.C.T. please?!

Let me preface this (before the tech bro stans come for me) by saying that, for the most part, AI as a tool is intriguing. I appreciate the capacity it has to speed-up workflows, aid in scientific research, improve graphics and summarize information—among other functions. It has great potential to assist humanity.

But, on the other hand… we live in a world riddled with powerful, opportunistic actors who would happily replace human labor for the sake of a buck (or like, billions of bucks). For example: if a media conglomerate wants to own your IP—permitting them to use it for anything—they can train AI to iterate that art into infinity and never hire you again. And when that’s offered in exchange for a single, small editorial commission… it’s hard to call that anything but greed in its most absurd form.

But this is not the action of some cartoon villain. This is precisely the predicament that illustrator Aysha Tengiz thwarted earlier this year. The deeply predatory nature of this situation prompted her to share the experience on Instagram along with her newfound (and necessary) obsession with copyright law. As she writes in her subsequent article for It’s Nice That:

The parent company of the magazine that originally reached out to me is massive. If this is a standard contract that gets sent to every artist that works for them, then they may have an enormous hub of artwork that they can train AI with. This means they could use AI to repeat the artwork style by referencing these images, without having to re-hire the artists who created the work. And it would also be completely legal, because they technically own that art.

When Tengiz countered with an offer of “an indefinite license to use the work in the magazine”—which still allows for incredible flexibility in usage rights—the company maintained their initial offer. So, she turned down the project. Good for her! Though, in an era where more creative work (and money) is taken from the hands of artists and fed into computers, that decision isn’t made lightly.

Creative Sentiments

I’ve been met with a mix of responses when it comes to creatives on AI. Some people find it exciting, using it as a tool for quickly ideating and iterating. Others brush off the threats to our industry with a (somewhat naive) “AI sucks, it will never be able to replace a human.” Or “Well, if a client isn’t going to value your humanity and vision anyway, do you really want to work with them?” And these are all fair responses. But… I feel that they miss the point.

The point is that there are few regulations governing these increasingly sophisticated systems, which means artists have limited protections. Tech companies have already scraped the Internet, taken our work to train their image generators, and are directly competing with us. Even Jessica Hische, one of the leaders in our field, admits in a LinkedIn post that she is not immune to the negative impacts of AI.

Legal Happenings

As we await definitive legal rulings in the US to determine whether or not taking copyrighted materials to train AI is fair use, we at least got word that (for now) art created by AI is not copyrightable. And a recent US Copyright Office pre-publication opinion hints that tech giants might not be able to cry “fair use” for everything. An excerpt (from p.111):

But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries.

Of course, the head of our Copyright Office was fired two days later. Go figure.

Over in the UK there has been a back and forth between the House of Commons (evidently aka “the government”) and the House of Lords regarding an amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill. As the BBC explains, this addition would “add transparency requirements, which aim to ensure copyright holders have to give permission for their work to be used.” The amendment has received overwhelming support from British creatives, which is why—as the House of Commons continues rejecting it—celebrities like Elton John are compelled to call their asses “losers.”

Anyway, I feel the need to abruptly stop myself from going any further down this rabbit hole. But the impact—positive and negative—of AI on our field is something artists must stay informed about, which is why I bring these news stories to your attention. As Aysha Tengiz remarked in her article, “Clearly, it’s now more important than ever for artists to understand and protect our rights.”

Helpful links

• The US’s Graphic Artists Guild provides some free resources regarding copyright for artists, as well as the UK’s Association of Illustrators.

• If you would like to “poison” your art as an offense against AI image generators, you can try out Nightshade. Another option is Glaze, though this defends your art style without the poisoning part (NPR explains a bit about how they work).

• This article actually got me curious about playing with text-prompt image generators—particularly the section about art director Karen X Cheng’s Cosmo AI cover art process.

• Yury Vetrov explores the many use cases of AI across the design field. I particularly appreciated the “What To Read” section.

• Spawning.ai has created some defensive tools for artists to use on their websites, including Kudurru (blocks AI scrapers) and ai.txt (tells machines not to train on your content).

• You can see if your art is in the most popular AI image dataset, LAION-5B. This browser extension also helps identify images that have been scraped to train AI. Both are offered by Spawning.ai.

• The Verge covers some of the above recommendations, as well as tips on opting your work out of training datasets.

Note: Some of these resources I’m still in the process of exploring myself, so if you’ve used any of them please let me know your thoughts!

Well, that’s it for this week’s edition. Unless some bombshell drops in the next two weeks, I’ll be back to sharing studio updates and art in my next newsletter.

As always, feel free to reach out with questions and comments. Since this is a somewhat hot button topic I only ask that you be nice (please)!!

Ciao ciao,
-Liz

Greeting Card at Trader Joe’s!

I licensed a design for greeting cards!!! And they’re now available for purchase at Trader Joe’s!! This is my first ever licensing deal and I am so freaking thrilled, as I’m sure you can tell by my superfluous use of exclamation marks. In fact, it feels a bit surreal because they reached out to me (!!)

I typically think of myself as quietly putting things out into a void under the cover of anonymity, which is not true because I have clients and a website and social media (and this newsletter—hello!). But these lingering tendrils of imposter syndrome do have me feeling in disbelief when I’m approached for dream collaborations like this. Literally this was a career goal! Next time you’re at TJ’s, check out the greeting card section and let me know if you see it.

Also, I would be remiss not to mention that I would absolutely love to license more work. If you know of any brands that are on the hunt for art to license, please send them my way! I’m steadily building my this area of my portfolio in between other projects. You can check out what I have available at the link below.

View My Licensing Portfolio

E-Gift Card Designs

Over the last few years I’ve kind of become a gift card aficionado — if making a lot of gift card designs for one brand makes you an aficionado, lol.

For real though, I’ve made a minimum of 32 gift card designs for Raising Cane’s. My initial designs from 2020 lived on physical gift cards (“Have a Very Saucy Birthday” still lives on in physical form). However, brands have been pushing towards electronic gift cards recently, a trend about which I cannot complain as I love an animated e-gift card — and the avoidance of unnecessary plastic waste.

In the last several months I’ve worked on eGift cards themed to Lunar New Year, Easter / Spring, and Winter Holidays — as well as some Evergreen varieties. I also have a page in my archive dedicated to some older designs I worked on. Seriously, I’m a gift card design veteran at this point!

As I continue branching out to more clients, this is an area I feel extremely well-versed in. So please, send any parties interested in gift card designs my way! You can reply to this email or drop me a line at liz@lizvolpi.com.

Oh also, if you want an eGift Card from Raising Cane’s, you can find them here!

3 Things I’ve Been Into Recently

Ok, enough self-promotion. Here are some cool things from around the Internet you might like:

• This website streams a bunch of radio stations from around the world, so you can scroll about the globe and pick a location to hear from. They also have a randomization feature called Balloon Ride, which is very chat-roulette-but-for-radio-stations (a reference for my fellow millennials, lol).

• Two of my favorite Substack authors joined forces in podcasting last year to discuss the hot mess that is American fashion and beauty culture, a team-up which I have been thoroughly enjoying. Few writers out there are as successful in wittily and critically analyzing US culture through the lens of trends and celebrity. I can’t recommend them enough! Their newsletters are The Review of Beauty and I Heart Mess.

• This beautiful story about a singing Husky that made my sister cry.

Ok, I feel that I have gone on long enough! As always, thank you for reading and for supporting my work. Please reach out if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or simply the desire to say hello. Catch ya next time!

Abrazos,
-Liz :)

P.S.
Can you believe I’m still keeping up the every-other-week posting schedule?? Lol

I hope you’ve been basking in the springtime sun like a happy little reptile, blissfully unburdened by seasonal allergies. 🤧

As I’m sure you’re aware, the season of vacationers pouring photos of their travels into our eyeballs has dawned. And I’m happy to say… I’m no exception!

I took an extended trip to Japan last month, where I collected images of pretty much everything—including several designs I found intriguing. The beauty (and cuteness) of Japanese art was truly off the charts. From illustrated event posters to manhole covers, even a poster about standing clear of train doors was delightful. Below is a sampling of some photos for your creative reference and enjoyment. Right click an image and select “open link in new tab” if you want to view any of these larger on a laptop/desktop.

Ok, I have to stop sharing before I recreate my phone’s photo feed. But I hope these images spark ideas for you! If you see any that resonate, feel free to save them to your mood boards or use them for reference (I’ll be doing the same). Just be sure to give me a photo credit (or credit to the illustrator, when known) if your mood board / referencing art is public.

I’m holding on tight to the joy I felt witnessing so much beauty and creativity in Japan. Travel has this way of pulling us out of our routines, injecting our minds with new perspectives, and teaching us a different way of seeing.

But truthfully, we don’t have to go far for these experiences. Creativity and inspiration live in our own communities, if we can see with fresh eyes. I think that’s been the best part of this trip for me: a new appreciation for the creativity in my own home, and a renewed dedication to my community.

Well, thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed my travel-inspired newsletter today. As always, feel free to reach out if you have questions about Japan or otherwise—or if you just want to say hi. I’m still aiming to keep up bi-weekly posting, so I’ll see you later this month!

じゃあね (jaane),
⁃ Liz (aka リズ)

Well, an extremely long minute has passed since I last sent out a newsletter.

As you may know, I started this to share my passion project of illustrating fables. Once client work ramped up last year, however, I struggled to create this art every month atop other work. Eventually, I just stopped sending newsletters altogether. So, I’m changing things up.

This newsletter is now my place to connect with y’all about all kinds of stuff. I’ll be sharing ideas, studio updates, business and art tips, plus general life stuff. This is where I’ll do it all. And when I have folklore-related passion projects along the way (you know I will), I’ll of course be sharing them with you here.

SO, what have I been up to for the last... several months? Year? Something like that.

Personally (and professionally), I pretty much ditched Instagram last year right before Meta announced they were using our content to train generative AI. Since then, Mark Zuckerberg has been giving me more reasons to stay off the app than to come back, so I’ve been happily finding other ways to keep up with friends and share my work. So far I’ve rediscovered this newsletter (hello!), Pinterest, emails, and the call button on my phone lol.

BUT, in the midst of all this chaos, I did manage to complete some cool projects that I’m excited to share with you below!

Exciting Projects (!!)

Pflashback! Explore Pflugerville Through the Years

This is a MASSIVE project that I poured my entire heart and soul into. I illustrated this 32 page coloring book commissioned by the City of Pflugerville, which is a very cool suburb of Austin.

The book explores some local history and culture, with activities sprinkled in to keep the reader engaged in varied ways. I worked with the city to write it and illustrated everything cover to cover. Minus the story writing, it took me about eight months and over 300 hours to complete. Like, I worked SO HARD on this project!! I’m incredibly proud of my work. So far the city has been getting positive feedback about it, which heartens me. It’s always affirming to hear your work connects with people.

If you want to see more of the book, check out my portfolio page - button below!

More Pflashback!

Cane’s Lotería Tabletop Game and Retail

I have not done this project justice because it’s such a big deal to me and I haven’t shared it nearly enough!!

Mini story time: A few years ago I created 28 illustrations for Raising Cane’s, a fast-casual restaurant founded in my home state of Louisiana (now 800+ restaurants strong worldwide). The illustrations featured on a brand-themed Lotería set, which is a tabletop game like bingo but uses pictures/cards instead of numbers. In addition to making the illustrations, I designed the game—which involved setting up table cards and the whole nine.

Cane’s released it, eventually they sold out, and they stayed out of stock for a while. THEN, late last year they revived the project with a game re-release accompanied by shirts, stickers, keychains, magnets… a full Lotería retail line that prominently features my 28 illustrations!!

I’ve done so much retail-focused product art over the years, but nothing hits like an entire collection solely and prominently featuring your illustration work. And for Raising Cane’s no less! I think it does kind of impress my Louisiana-based family and friends, which is a plus for my ego.

If you’re interested in buying any of the Lotería line, check it out on raisingcanes.com. You can also view more of the project on my portfolio.

Lotería Portfolio Page

Shop Update: Vive La Résistance Pins

Another cool thing that has been happening is people are buying this pin! I’ve done virtually no marketing for my online shop (I’m ashamed to say), and yet many people have discovered this pin and placed orders. If you’d like to order one yourself, check out the link to my shop!

Vive La Résistance Pin

Other News: Typism Feature Interview

I’m so pleased to say that Typism published an interview with me a few months back, wherein I speak to my lettering process, dealing with creative block, time management, etc. You can read the full interview here.

Typism Interview

Ok, this newsletter is way too long! I could harp on and on updating you about my life, but I’ll stop for this edition. Thank you so much for showing an interest in my art, career, perspectives, etcetera. I’m excited to kick-restart this newsletter and keep up an every-other-week pace (fingers crossed)! It feels good to engage with y’all in a more long-form manner, I hope you agree.

As always, feel free to reply with any questions or if you just want to say hello! Hope you have been having a great week out there.

Take care,
-Liz :)

P.S. - One more thing because I can’t help myself: I recently made my resource library password-free, so anyone can pop in without restrictions! Check it out if you haven’t already.

The Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

Translated by George Fyler Townsend, via Project Gutenberg.

ONCE UPON A TIME a Wolf resolved to disguise his appearance in order to secure food more easily. Encased in the skin of a sheep, he pastured with the flock deceiving the shepherd by his costume. In the evening he was shut up by the shepherd in the fold; the gate was closed, and the entrance made thoroughly secure. But the shepherd, returning to the fold during the night to obtain meat for the next day, mistakenly caught up the Wolf instead of a sheep, and killed him instantly.

Harm seek, harm find.

So, according to Scholarly Journal Wikipedia (ahem…), we see the earliest recorded use of “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” as an analogy in the Gospel of Matthew, dating to the 1st century AD. In this biblical context, Jesus uses it to warn against deception: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). The longer fable with the twist in the wolf’s fate comes about 1,100 years later in the writings of Greek rhetorician Nikephoros Basilakis. So, although this story follows the Aesopian style, it certainly wasn’t written by Aesop (though, tbd on if he was real anyway). More on this in the Epilogue!

Saucy & Spicy Summer Art Challenge

This is a pretty laid back challenge in that there are no specific prompts within the challenge month, and you can post as often or as seldom as you’d like!

How to participate:

• Share a piece of art (illustration, lettering piece, pattern, etc) you created on Instagram based on your interpretation of saucy and spicy summer vibes

• Use the hashtag #saucyandspicysummer and be sure to tag the hosts in your IG post so we can see and share your work! Hosts: @lizvolpi @daysfullof @jojowangdesigns @palindromeart @jag.ink @eveandersondraws

• Challenge runs from June 1 - 30, feel free to create as many pieces as you’d like for the month!

Feeling stumped? Here are some prompt ideas to get started!

• Summer Nights & Street Food

• Cool Cocktails & Spicy Sips

• Summer Snacks

• Juicy Fruits

• Red Hot Flames & Flavors

Can’t wait to see and share your amazing art!!!

NEW: Creative Resource Hub!

I’m super excited to announce the launch of my Creative Resource Hub! This is a collection of all my free resources—swatches, guides, videos, etc.—saved in a convenient little webpage for you to easily access. This hub is exclusive to all my newsletter subscribers so, much like a secret club, you need a password to get in! Go to lizvolpi.com/resourcehub and use the password iampastatoo to gain entry.

I’ll be creating more resources to add, so be sure to fill out this request submission form if there is a particular topic, guide, etc. that you’d like to see. I hope you like it!

Freebie Zone!

I’m taking a design out of the vault for this month’s freebie, a downloadable bookmark! Initially I shared this in an email last year but I love it so much that I wanted to make sure new subscribers got access to it! Tap the link below to grab it :)

Grab the Freebie!

Epilogue

SO, how did you like that fable?! Prior to reading it, I only knew “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” as a phrase referencing the biblical context, so I thoroughly enjoyed this story with the lil’ twist at the end! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did :) As always, feel free to drop me a line if you want to say hi, have any questions, etc. Otherwise, see you next time!

Arrivederci,
-Liz

The Man with Two Sweethearts

Translated by George Fyler Townsend, via Project Gutenberg.

A MIDDLE-AGED MAN, whose hair had begun to turn gray, courted two women at the same time. One of them was young, and the other well advanced in years. The elder woman, ashamed to be courted by a man younger than herself, made a point, whenever her admirer visited her, to pull out some portion of his black hairs. The younger, on the contrary, not wishing to become the wife of an old man, was equally zealous in removing every gray hair she could find. Thus it came to pass that between them both he very soon found that he had not a hair left on his head.

Those who seek to please everybody please nobody.

According to Scholarly Journal Wikipedia (ahem…), the original Greek translates this story to “The Man with Two Courtesans” or “Lovers”, but later translations have called them concubines, mistresses, fiancées, wives and—in the case of George Fyler Townsend— “sweethearts.” It’s interesting to see how the terminology changes over time, becoming more or less risqué depending on what a translator intends to say. But… more on that in the Epilogue!

Upcoming Events

I’m presenting at the Carina Gardner Craft and Design Event!

This Thursday—April 18 from 10:45-11:10 am MT—you can catch me presenting at the Carina Gardner Craft & Design Event. This is a free, two-day online workshop where a bunch of makers & shakers share insights on their crafts, and I’ve prepared a talk about sketching with some tips on planning, composition, and refinement. I’m hoping it kind of demystifies the process for beginners, especially when it comes to developing a unique composition.

Get tickets to the Design & Craft Event

To lower the barrier of entry with this talk, I’ll be demonstrating with some pretty standard supplies: a pencil, computer paper and an eraser. I hope you enjoy it!

Catch me at Slice of Pflugerville on Sat. April 27th!

For my fellow Austinites out there, I’ll be vending at the Slice of Pflugerville festival on Saturday, April 27th! If you’ve never been before, this event is all about celebrating cultural diversity and features a bunch of performers: dancers, musicians, and even poets! Plus there will be plenty of food, kid-friendly activities and lots of craftspeople vending. It’s gonna be a great time! The event is from 11am - 6pm and free to attend, check out details via the button below.

Visit Slice of Pflugerville

Also, here’s a pic of me with my market set-up from last year. This year I’ll also have free coloring pages and—fingers crossed—hardcover notebooks.

Freebie Zone!

This is a coloring page I drew a few years ago, but just let it sit on my iPad—never to enjoy a life of color. But, given that I’ve been working on a coloring book and drawing A LOT of animals recently, it seems like the right time to bring it out and let it live some life. Visit the button below to download and enjoy!

Get the Coloring Page

Also, I’m including links to some other freebies that most of you got in a welcome email when you signed up — just in case you need them again!

Get the Foxy & Boxy Lettering Guide

Download the Foxy & Boxy Swatches

Epilogue

Umm, THAT FABLE?? What a way of illustrating the notion that you can’t please everyone! Evidently this fable dates back to at least the first century AD, and I’m quite fond of Townsend’s interpretation that this is about the impossibility of pleasing everyone. Earlier readings are far more sexist, drawing the conclusion that “women are only interested in what they can get from a man.” Like what - his hair?? Seems like a leap in logic to meee!

ANYWAY, thank you so much for being here and I hope you enjoy the rest of your week :) As always, reply to this email if you want to say hi, otherwise see you next time!

The Mountain in Labor

Translated by George Fyler Townsend, via Project Gutenberg.

A MOUNTAIN was once greatly agitated. Loud groans and noises were heard, and crowds of people came from all parts to see what was the matter. While they were assembled in anxious expectation of some terrible calamity, out came a Mouse.

Don’t make much ado about nothing.

This is one of those fables that I first read and thought …huh??? But after considering it for a bit, I found it pretty profound. More on that in the epilogue.

*Big Announcement!!*

I’m a speaker at the Typism Skills Summit

Y’all, I am thrilled to be presenting a workshop at the Typism Skills Summit next week! If you don’t already know, Typism is a global community of lettering-lovers that hosts educational summits and publishes a curated book of art every year (one of my monster letters is featured in book 8). They are hosting a free three-day event at the end of January to help you learn new lettering skills.

Grab Your FREE Typism Ticket

I will be presenting my talk on January 26 at 4:40 pm CST with a live Q+A to follow at 5pm (no worries if you miss the talk - it is pre-recoded and available to access for a few days after). I’ll be demonstrating how to draw in a boxy, block letter style while designing the below Valentine’s Day card art. Anyone at any skill level can join! I’ll be working in Procreate on an iPad Pro, but feel free to follow along with pencil and paper. Click this link to sign-up!

If you’d like to add a reminder to your calendar, click the link below:

Add Calendar Reminder

Work Stuff

Some of y’all may have seen on my Instagram that over the last month I’ve been the Artist in Residence for Women of Type - sponsored by Paperlike. It’s been such a joy sharing my work with the community and getting to know so many cool people! Below are a couple of the pieces I created as part of the residency:

Upcoming Art Challenge

Starting February 1st I will be co-hosting a love-themed art challenge with five other incredible artists on Instagram! You are welcome to create art for all five prompts, or just drop in for one of two when you feel like it. All mediums are welcome! Here are a few guidelines for participating:

• Follow all 6 hosts: @lizvolpi @alyssamariag @artbybwsmith @chickofalltrade @jag.ink @seejessletter

• Use the hashtag #cuteandcupid

• Be sure to tag all 6 hosts in your posts! This ensures that we each see your work. We will be sharing many of our favorite entries, so don’t miss this step!

• Bonus: Include the prompts list as your second slide so others know how to join!

As a newsletter subscriber, you get access to the prompts a week early!! Feel free to interpret the below prompts however you like: you can pull from half of the prompt or work to combine both words. Get creative and have fun!

Freebies!

I have two freebies this month in preparation for the Typism summit. The first is a boxy lettering mini-workbook, which includes some tips and templates for getting started in this lettering style. I’ve also collected all the swatches I use in my talk and put them in a small kit for use in Procreate. Links below!

Get the Foxy & Boxy Lettering Guide

Download the Foxy & Boxy Swatches

Epilogue

Woof, I had a lot to share this month! Back to that fable…have I ever envisioned a mountain screaming in labor before reading this? No. But, do I actually kinda love this fable? Yes. Here’s my interpretation:

People often make a big fuss about nothing. Even a grand or formidable figure—who has the power to disturb literally everyone around them—will make their problem seem uniquely huge. But really… it’s the same small BS we all make a fuss about. Just because the person complaining is exceptional doesn’t mean the problem is, too.

Well, I hope you liked this edition of Art & Fable! As always, feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions, etc. Otherwise, see you next time!

The Thirsty Pigeon

Translation by George Fyler Townsend via Project Gutenberg

A PIGEON, oppressed by excessive thirst, saw a goblet of water painted on a signboard. Not supposing it to be only a picture, she flew towards it with a loud whir and unwittingly dashed against the signboard, jarring herself terribly. Having broken her wings by the blow, she fell to the ground, and was caught by one of the bystanders.

Zeal should not outrun discretion.

I gotta say… lucky for this gal, she fell into the arms of a bystander!! Who, hopefully, nursed her back to health and also adopted her.

Work Stuff!

I want to say thank you to everyone who followed along with the Almost Autumn Art Challenge! I’m so impressed with everyone’s work, you can check out some of the art here. So far there have been over 260 entries to the challenge!

The challenge ends on September 23 (the first day of fall but also my b-day, ahem…) so you still have a couple days left to submit some art for the last prompt: Camping & Cuddles. To enter, use the hashtag #almostautumnartchallenge when you post to Instagram and be sure to tag the hosts (@lizvolpi @dinariddledesign @crow.ski @alfasengupta ) so we can see and share your work!

Freebie Zone

If you haven’t grabbed this freebie, be sure to do so soon! I’ll have a special Halloween-themed freebie next time.

Grab the freebie

Epilogue

Well, I hope you liked that fable! This one felt a bit more obscure, there’s not a lot of info about it on the Internet… at least, not that I could find in the time it took me to write this, lol. I hope you all are having a fabulous conclusion to your summer and are getting excited for the upcoming change of seasons!

As always, reply to this email if you want to say hi or have any questions. Otherwise, catch you next time :)

Arrivederci,
- Liz

The Fox & The Grapes

Translated by George Fyler Townsend, via Project Gutenberg.

A FAMISHED FOX saw some clusters of ripe black grapes hanging from a trellised vine. She resorted to all her tricks to get at them, but wearied herself in vain, for she could not reach them. At last she turned away, hiding her disappointment and saying: “The Grapes are sour, and not ripe as I thought.”

People often downplay what they desire when they cannot attain it.

According to Scholarly Journal Wikipedia (ahem), a guy named Phaedrus recorded this fable in Latin prior to his death in 50 AD, so it’s at least 1,973 years old—though, almost certainly older. Over time, storytellers would change the fruit to whatever their audience best recognized: cherries in France, rowanberries in Scandinavia, and raspberries in areas of Germany.

MY SHOP IS OPEN!!

It’s here!!! I am officially soft-launching my retail site and offering a 20% off discount to you lovely newsletter subscribers for the rest of September! I’ve added new prints, enamel pins, and greeting cards for you to enjoy. Check it out at lizvolpi.com/shop and use the discount code: ARTFABLE20

Visit my shop!

Other Work Stuff

Y’ALL, I’m super honored to have been featured in the article “100+ Resources for Hand Letterers and Calligraphers” on the Paperlike Blog! It’s written by the INCREDIBLE Alanna Flowers, a lettering artist who is also one of the kindest / coolest people on the Internet. This is seriously the most comprehensive guide to hand-lettering and calligraphy you’ll ever need, so check it out if you are interested in skilling-up.

And finally, the Almost Autumn Art Challenge is in full swing! It lasts through September 23rd (the first day of autumn / my 32nd birthday), so you have plenty of time to jump in if you want! Check out the prompts below and read more about how to participate in this Instagram post.

Freebie Zone

New freebie! Some of you might recognize this coloring page, I made it a little over two years ago for my local Creative Mornings chapter in Dallas. This project kinda unlocked something in my brain and, ever since, I’ve been super into drawing little lady bugs and bees like this. Anyway, I’m bringing it out of the archives for you! I hope you enjoy giving it color as much as I enjoyed making it. :)

Get the freebie

Epilogue

SO, how’d you like that fable?! This one really highlights for me that, even though we’ve learned a ton over the last 2,000 years, in a lot of ways human behavior has remained the same. I mean, it sucks to admit defeat! Even worse, it sucks to deal with people who CAN’T admit defeat!! Turns out we’ve been annoyed by this kind of behavior for millennia, lol.

Anyway, as always, reply to this email if you have any questions about my work, or if you just want to say hi. Otherwise, catch ya next time (:

Totsiens,
-Liz

The Two Pots

Translation by George Fyler Townsend via Project Gutenberg.

A River carried down in its stream two Pots, one made of earthenware and the other of brass. The Earthen Pot said to the Brass Pot, “Pray keep at a distance and do not come near me, for if you touch me ever so slightly, I shall be broken in pieces, and besides, I by no means wish to come near you.”

Equals make the best friends.

Ok, so I hate to disagree ever so slightly with my man George Fyler Townsend, but this is my read:

Because these stories were often told among enslaved communities, I’d specify that this is a warning to the underclasses about the wealthy and powerful in society. Obviously the upper classes are direct oppressors to the enslaved, but even free people of lower class standing would be wise to avoid entanglement in the affairs of the rich. A wealthy person could essentially buy their way out of facing certain negative consequences. If you don’t have money or influence… you might be screwed.

According to Scholarly Journal Wikipedia (I know…), written versions of this fable date to around the 2nd century BCE, inscribed in Greek and Sanskrit. The Greek version bears a message in-line with my personal read of this fable. The Sanskrit version focuses more on the integrity of a person:

Friendship with bad men is like a pot of clay, easy to break but difficult to rejoin. With good men it is like a pot of gold, difficult to break but easy to mend.

Wikipedia attributes this to Panchatantra, reconstructed by Franklin Edgerton.

All that to say, variations of this fable have been shared far and wide as a warning to keep company with quality people who won’t screw you over. Still valid!

Exciting Work Stuff!!

After 3 years of it being basically dead, I’m currently bringing my freelance business back to life! I am focusing specifically on illustration / lettering work for book designs, murals, and stationery so if you know anyone who might be interested in those services (including yourself), hit me up!

In other work-ish news, the Almost Autumn Art Challenge starts in a week! I made a sliiight error in the last email by switching the order of Rainy Days & Candles with Apples & Acorns (sorry!!), but the corrected schedule is below. Everyone is welcome to participate and all mediums are acceptable! Check out more info on my Instagram.

Freebie Zone

If you haven’t grabbed this coloring page, be sure to do so soon! I’ll have a new freebie available come next time.

Get the freebie!

Epilogue

So, what do you think of that fable?! I’m really curious to know how others might interpret this one, so let me know your thoughts! It’s so cool that each of these stories morphs and changes depending on when / where it is told, and by whom. I just love them so much!

As always, reply to this email to say hello. Otherwise, catch you next time!

Hasta luego,
-Liz

The Legend of Aesop (in a nutshell)

Aesop was an enslaved man born mute and severely disfigured in 620 BCE (over 2,600 years ago) on the Greek island of Samos. One day he was nice to a priestess of the goddess Isis, which made Isis happy. As a reward, she and the Muses gifted him with speech and clever storytelling. He eventually leveraged these skills to gain his freedom and got all rich and famous as “the guy who tells those stories.” In 564 BCE, when he was 56, Aesop traveled to Delphi and told some fables that the people of Delphi did not like. He then insulted their heritage and intelligence, which pissed them off so much that they threw him off of a cliff. He did not survive. Fin.

So, was Aesop real?

Personally I want to say yes, but I recognize that’s a bit of wishful thinking. Our earliest surviving reference to Aesop comes nearly 140 years after he died, in Herodotus’s The Histories [1]. All Herodotus really has to say about Aesop is that he was a slave, he was a known storyteller, and he was killed by Delphians [2]. I really really really think 99% of the stories attributed to Aesop weren’t his invention, and that 99% of the lore around his life is fabricated. I mean, he fully could have been a made-up person. But I want to believe! And I think that’s just fine.

Where did these stories come from?

Regardless of whether or not he was real, the lore surrounding Aesop tells us a lot about the ancient tradition of fable-telling. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), attributing these stories to an enslaved man suggests that they were either intended for the enslaved, invented by the enslaved, or both. The IEP further explains their analysis below.

Why would slaves be thought to be particularly appropriate as the creators and audience for animal fables? [...] First, many authors have noted that fables allow for the possibility of hidden messages. They allow slaves to tell stories to one another about the cruelty of slavery and how its effects can be mitigated or evaded, without communicating in a way that will get them caught and punished by their masters. The fables can also provide messages about how to successfully survive in a world in which the odds are stacked against you. […] Second, it is important to recall that as an ugly slave, unable to speak, Aesop himself is on the boundary between human and animal at the beginning of his life. His slave status would by itself mark him as being on this boundary. […] It is only once he reaches the pinnacle of fame, wealth, and influence—when he has left his beginnings as almost more animal than human behind and moved from the low end of the human hierarchy to the high end—that he makes the errors in judgment that lead to his death in Delphi. [3]

The IEP also argues that the story surrounding Aesop’s life takes on a fabulist message much like the tales attributed to him. Perhaps arrogance leads to demise would be the attached moral??

Still, my all-time favorite thing about fables is that this tradition of storytelling has been shared across many cultures for thousands of years, always adjusting to reflect the people who share them wherever and whenever they are. The fables that come down to us today are highly refined artifacts, linking us to a chain of ancestors that stretches farther into the past than we even know. They are so much more than stories by some dead Greek guy—who maybe didn’t exist anyway! They belong to all of us.

Epilogue

I hope you enjoyed this context corner for Aesop’s fables! I’ll be back next time with our regularly scheduled programming, but I hope this background brings you a whole new appreciation for these stories. It certainly did for me!

TTYL,
-Liz

Further Reading & Works Cited

If you’re interested in reading more about Aesop and the tradition of telling fables, I recommend this article by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

1. https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/herodotus

2. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D134

3. https://iep.utm.edu/aesop/