When my family lived in Hawaii my dad bought a big, warm-colored koa wood “entertainment center.” I put entertainment center in quotation marks because that’s how we always referred to it. Really it was just a big cabinet —a bit like a standing wardrobe except built to house electronics instead of sweaters. From Hawaii on, it moved everywhere with us.

It was built with a long cabinet door on the left side, and then another cabinet which could store a tv, (but never did, at least in my memory) and a set of drawers beneath it. The cabinet to the left held my dad’s CD player, which I never fully understood how to use. I did learn if you mashed one or two of the buttons, generally, (after a bit of sputtering) it would open and allow you to feed it up to five CDs at once. Inside there was a distinct smell — part oiled wood, part heated dust from the whirring of the player.

My dad has a pretty decent CD collection which he always kept in the second bottom drawer of the entertainment center. Certain occasions called for certain soundtracks. Breakfast for example, was the Cazimero Brothers. Dinner was Vivaldi. Weekend mornings ranged from Boston and Queen, to Whitney or Toni Braxton.

During Christmas, Dad would have my brother or I cue up two very specific Christmas albums: Merry Christmas, Baby (his preference, which includes ten tracks of classic 1950s and 60s Christmas songs) and En Riktig Svensk Jul (my mom’s preference — a collection of very old Swedish holiday music, which for any non-Swedish person would probably sound extremely strange. My husband, Michael, would likely agree, except now I think he’s just used to it.) To me, both of these albums are the definition of what Christmas sounds like.

A handful of Christmases ago, I was listening to Merry Christmas, Baby while decorating the tree with Michael. As we strung up lights and hung ornaments, I recognized a very old feeling. It’s the same feeling I have every time I hear these songs. Or, maybe, it’s less of a feeling really, and more like the sensation around an idea. Like nostalgia for something you haven’t quite experienced yet, but would like to.

Those Christmas songs, especially the old school stuff — “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” “The Christmas Song,” (aka Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…) “I’'ll Be Home For Christmas,” “Rocking Around The Christmas Tree,” or “You’re All I Want For Christmas,” — these songs shaped an idea about what it might like to be grown up. What it would be like to have parties, or be in love during the holidays, or to decorate with someone else in your own home.

It was funny, because while I was consciously recognizing this childhood experience for the first time, I was also actively doing the very things those songs made me wonder about. I was decorating with my partner, in our shared home, as a grown up (well, mostly, anyways).

Yet, listening to those songs evoked the same sort of wistfulness it did for me at twelve years old. Like a sort of foggy, still-life-daydream of what my older self and one-day life may be like, which may or may not include sitting regally by a fireplace in a fancy apartment somewhere. Perhaps at a holiday cocktail party? But most definitely in a big city, where it would be snowing (obviously).

That year, the year of the revelation, I was in San Diego (Big city — check). I was living in an apartment, but it was certainly not fancy. It was also certainly not snowing. But it was ours, and it was really wonderful. It was a really wonderful time in both of lives.

There’s the idea of something, and then there’s our lived experiences. Sometimes these seem to exist in tandem, no matter how old we get. I can’t help but smile when this happens. It’s like experiencing little synaptic glitches that reveal earlier versions of myself. As if little me is just stopping by for a moment to remind me of her ideas and feelings. There’s something sweet about it.

Anyways, this month’s illustration, Christmas Eve Dance, was inspired by that sweetness.

Also, in case you’re curious about my illustration process, here’s a few behind-the-scenes snaps of the development.

ROUGH SKETCH

I roughed out my sketch and used masking fluid to cover the areas I wanted to keep bright. Usually I tape off a border, but I couldn’t find the right size paper and I was too impatient, so I just went for it and decided I’d create a border later on in Procreate.

Tone & Color Palette Set Up

Then, I toned the paper with yellow ochre to set the mood of the painting. I wanted to keep it warm and a create a sort of vintage feel. Choosing a color palette is something I still struggle with quite a bit. There’s always something that gets a bit lost in translation from your head to the page, and I find translating the “feeling” of my ideas the most difficult.

I didn’t go through a traditional art school program, so color theory is something I’ve sort of had to muddle my way through. It’s a goal of mine to keep exploring color and color theory a bit more in the coming year in order to become more comfortable and hopefully make this translation a bit easier. For this one I landed on yellow ochre, alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue.

Inking

I don’t typically ink before I paint, but this time I decided to use Octopus Ink in Seahorse Brown to outline before going in with color.

Finishing

After painting I used some color pencils to add a bit more texture and details and then threw it in Procreate to clean up a few things…. and there you have it! The final piece:

MATERIALS

5x7 piece of hot press watercolor paper
Prismacolor pencils & Derwent drawing pencils
Sennelier Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine blue, and Yellow Ochre
Princeton Select Round Brush,Size 12 and Princeton Neptune Brush, Size 4
Procreate

Thank you for all who have followed along with me this year. I so appreciate your support and interest in my work.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and start to the New Year.

Love,

Sara

Shortly before my daughter was born I typed something along the lines of “ how to be an artist and a mother” into Google. Funny how Google has become a Magic 8 Ball of sorts… and I felt myself willing the collective to tell me everything was going to be OK — yes of course you can do it all! — no, you won’t completely lose yourself to this little being — knowing full well that life was soon going to be drastically different.

I was under no illusion that my days or my time would be the same. I was excited, but also afraid… Mainly, because at 36-years-old there have been so many things that have felt out of reach professionally, and soon, I knew I’d have a whole new competing job title — one I had absolutely no pre-requisites for.

I don’t really know what I hoped to find… but I don’t remember discovering much of anything at the time that made me feel very relieved about juggling creativity and motherhood. In fact, I think what the Google Gods unearthed that day was pretty depressing.

My daughter has now been here with us for 6 months, and oddly, in these last 6 months, I would argue that I’ve been more creatively productive than I’ve been in many other seasons of my life. Yet, one of the most difficult things I’ve experienced during this transition is not only juggling creative pursuits with raising an infant — it’s not simply finding time, but time itself.

My initial fear was losing myself in motherhood. Strangely (or not-so-strangely), I feel braver and more capable in many ways, but also more afraid for different, and more unexpected reasons.

I am braver than I was because bringing my daughter here was the hardest and most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced, which has left many of the things I worried about previously seem pale by comparison. But I am also more fearful because I feel like it will all slip through my fingers.

On a difficult day a couple months ago, I queried Google again with a similar musing, and this time I found a true gem from the New Yorker titled, “Being an Artist and Mother,”an autobiographical comic by artist Laura Weinstein.

I found myself both laughing and crying with her insights, which felt nearly identical to my own experience.

Image Credit: New Yorker, Laura Weinstein

She seemed to understand the simultaneous exhaustion and yet overwhelmingly obsessive desire to document this experience… the experience of becoming undone and remade again into this new person all while caring for a brand-new human who is so rapidly changing. Together, my daugther and I are morphing at what feels like lightning speed and I find myself fighting to hold onto this time…

How can I capture the subtleness in her growing movements… the density of her little body shifting forward in her highchair to look at the snow falling outside the sliding glass door…

Or how heavy her cheek looks against her dad’s arm when she falls asleep.

Often, I find myself wishing there was a pause button so I could earn myself just enough time to absorb, but also to reinterpret. I think most artists feel this sort of insatiable desire to extricate their realities. To transpose and transmit our human condition. But when you’re mothering and mothering becomes part of the experience you want to express the question is…

And then to top it all off….

I had hoped to attain certain things before my daughter was born, and yet I’m finding that since she’s arrived, this very predicament: the making and capturing, the desire to hold onto something that can’t possibly be held, is changing my process and how I make art as a whole.

This month, on the Letterbox, my Patreon account, I’ll dive into what the creative process looks like for me today. I share some of my personal work, and offer a sneak peek into my visual journal.

Join the Letterbox