I've been making the Useful Calendar featuring the Lunar New Year animal for long enough that I'm now in the process of having a second go at each animal—since 2023, the Year of the Rabbit. It's kind of fun to look back on my earlier illustrations, when I can find them, as in this case. This is the San Francisco garter snake, listed as endangered, and generally declared to be the most beautiful snake in North America, at least according to the judgment of a lot of random people on the Internet.
Originally, I made one illustration for the top of the poster calendar, which I also featured on the cover card of my desk calendar. Now I make 12 illustrations, choosing from among those for the cover card of the desk calendar and another to top the poster. I also do a lot of research about the featured animal (since 2019), its natural history and the myths and folklore about it, which informs my illustrations and the captions I write for them. Occasionally, I even spin off a zine loaded with information and additional illustrations related to the animal of the year. But those take a lot of time (I'm persnickety: I fact check myself and cite sources), so it's not a thing I do every year.
This year's poster calendar actually comes in two versions, because I was afraid that people would be turned off by seeing a snake at the top of their calendar, so one version has the San Francisco garter snake and the other features Saint Patrick banishing a sassy Irish snake from the emerald isle. A footnote at the bottom explains that there never were any snakes in Ireland.
This year, for the first time, I had the calendars printed at a local printer—Smart Set—instead of printing them myself as needed. They turned out great and I really like this printer for their friendly and patient customer service (they work with a lot of local artists, so they're used to us, if you know what I mean), quality of their work, and eco-friendliness.
But I did a terrible job of estimating the number I would need, which means I still have a lot of calendars, available for half price in my Etsy shop, here.
The calendar minizine, new this year, is printed, assembled and sewn by me, so even though there's no overstock of that one, it is also discounted. That's grouped with the calendars. My other zines are in this section.
Thanks for looking.
