Rainy afternoon at the animal cafe

Three drawings

As I (slowly) work on the script for my children’s comic/graphic novel, I’ve been thinking about sequential images and wanting to draw them, so this was the result. The cat-girl character and her floating sidekick are named Lulu and Little Cloud. They were the protagonists of the picture book dummy I recently completed, and are also the main characters of the comic (working title: The Adventures of Lulu and Little Cloud), they just keep popping up for me again and again.

The last drawing includes a little homage to one of my favorite illustrators, Rokuro Taniuchi, specifically this image which I saved on Pinterest long ago:

Some of you may have seen my post in Substack notes, but the subject matter of my drawings lately has also been very influenced by the illustrator Kaya Doi, and her Chirri Chirra book series. In one of my favorite scenes, the protagonists come upon a cafe in the forest that is only open on rainy days, where the windows are like picture frames for sitting and looking out at the rain.

This kind of illustration gives me such a feeling, it’s almost like a joyous ache. That is usually what drives me to make my own art: so I can try to pass the feeling on to others in turn.