T-shirt design! =) (Patreon)

New Patron welcome time! Hi, Alysha, Sarah, and Holly!

I've been asked - a little last-minute - to design a t-shirt for the Birmingham event in August (yes, very last minute!), and the idea I immediately had was this - Tolkien's silhouette, with the most important scenes from his works. I chose Beren and Lúthien, of course (sit down, Feanor, they are more important than you), a dragon attack (could be Gondolin), and the Shire. 

Need to finish this by Thursday. =O

The last week of school was really draining, and I'm only slowly getting into anything resembling an art mood. I have to force myself even more right now, as I got some news yesterday that felt as if it was from a really, really bad film. My parents told me that a childhood friend of mine, whom I had not seen for more than twenty years, had died. They sent me the obituary in the paper. There were no dates, just the years of her life. Puzzled, I googled her, and was horrified to find that she had been found dead in her apartment ONE DAY after I had been to the same town with my class. I went 150 yards past her. I even thought of her, and wondered what had become of her. She had been lying there for months. Probably murdered. Probably drug-related. She must have completely broken with her family - her abusive father died a few years ago; her helpless mother (plus her severely mentally and physically disabled brother) didn't miss her enough to investigate sooner. I don't even know how to process this. I had thought of her a lot over the last few weeks, about episodes of our childhood friendship I hadn't thought about in decades. It's as if she was trying to speak to me. And now she's become one of these horrible stories of people rotting in an apartment for months before being found.