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💫PEGGY | Crippling anxiety is my ✨personal brand✨. I’m genuinely baffled that ‘RPF’ (resting panic face) hasn’t become a ‘thing’ in 2024. Considering RPF is the ‘fetch’ to our inner Gretchen, we’re on a mission to make ‘RPF’ happen in 2024 for all you wonderful beings with more open tabs in your minds than on your browsers.

As a kid, feeling overwhelmed triggered this weird, fuzzy sensation in my chest that I couldn’t quite identify at the time, a mix between fear and dread. Imagine an unwanted, tingling buzz crashing in mid-sentence and choking you up when you least expect it. Sadly, this sensation didn’t pack its bags with age.

I tried everything you could possibly (and legally) try: meditation, breathwork, bizarre homeopathic remedies, strategic bathroom escapes, and the classic diving under the covers—all with mixed results.

With time, I learned that what worked best for me was to simply own it. That’s it. As soon as I stopped worrying about what other people thought of me, my levels of anxiety and panic began to decrease to what they are now: Chihuahua-esque but manageable levels of panic and anxiety.

Here’s to owning your ‘RPF look’ like the coolest pair of boots you’ve ever worn and giving the middle finger to all your pesky inner ‘what will they think?’ phantoms. Panic’s in vogue, and we’re making it our badge of honor.

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💫 Keep your unrealistic punctuality expectations to yourself 🤚 | Here’s a rough timelapse of the making of Louise. I first sketched her years ago in an old sketchbook I no longer own. As soon as the pen-and-paper sketch was ready, I began drawing her on my iPad, which explains why you see me tracing digitally from a notebook page.

I often start a sketch, and in the process, a story or a piece of dialogue will come to me—that’s how I’ll know I have something. This process reminds me a bit of how songwriters create music: some of them come up with the melody first and then the lyrics, while for others, the lyrics always come first. Well, in my case, the sketch usually comes first, and the story takes shape as I draw.

As nothing came to me while tracing her for the second time, I set her aside for months—years, actually—and I’d nearly given up on her until a few weeks ago, when I found her while looking through my old sketch files for inspiration. And then it came to me, so here she is 💖 our queen of running late, Louise.

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💭 do we want what we can’t have, or do we have a knack for taking all that we already have for granted while chasing whatever’s faster, bigger, newer and louder?

learning to differentiate between what i must fight hard to accomplish and what’s simply not meant for me has been a painful lesson to learn, but it’s also brought me immense peace 💖

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[sneak peek into my drawing process once upon a very uninspired-turned-into-productive day] 

life moves way too quickly and time passes way too fast for us to hang on to the past. 

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🌊 I originally drew Blue Pirate Babe back in 2018, during a ridiculously emotional and existential period of my life. (It’s a recurring theme, really. Happens at least twice a year, especially in wintertime, though I’m pretty sure I drew her while living in LA, a.k.a., no cloudy days.) It was then, fittingly, re-released during the pandemic, amidst yet another insufferable ‘what is this life and what is this world?’ kind of phase.

✍️A sad-eyed, eye-patch-wearing pirate looking at us looking at her and the tiny anchor tattoo on her neck. I’m not even sure where she came from. If anyone were to read her aura, they’d see nothing but blue. ALL BLUE. Blue all around. Blue as in Eiffel 65’s ‘Blue Da Ba Dee’ track. Blue as in completely submerged in a constant state of existential dread. This time around, I’ve played with the colors and added a bit of animation to the whole ordeal. She was nameless as of ten minutes ago, but I feel like ‘Olivia’ suits her well; though I suspect I’ve given this name to a few other characters already—it reminds me of Popeye’s girlfriend, Olive Oyl, who also makes me think of Fido Dido. I guess I have a thing for tall, gangly, awkward-looking cartoon characters. (They just seem so endearing and intelligent-looking in a cool-but-nerdy way.)

🔮Anyhoo, this turned into a rather lengthy, stream-of-consciousness caption that I’ve just spilled onto the Instagram sphere, intended merely to reintroduce you to the original Blue Pirate Babe, Olivia Sea. (I’ve literally just come up with that, but I think I like it. What do you think?)

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✍️ rebellious girls do it better 🫰a behind-the-scenes look at the sketching and drawing process for one of my latest sketches, Maria Eugenia—the main character of the novel Ifigenia—using Procreate.

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ALFRED | Just a galactic voyager on a mission to become ✨THAT alien✨ Stay loyal to the only routine that counts: Make art. Break Hearts. Sleep. Repeat. 💫💔😴 [P.S. Bringing back Alfred for the animated series characters cast ✍️]

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Angsty Clouds 🌧️ This one’s for all the blue-haired girls with blue-hearted thoughts. ✨💙 She’s the ultimate sad girl but one of my favorite characters. I first published Clouds back in 2018, and decided to bring her back and clean up the font style match my current one, as I’ll be bringing her back more often. 💫

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Our fave overthinking girlie, Margaux 🧠, is back on her ✨overthinking grind✨laying down the uncomfortable life lessons we’d much rather ignore. So get comfortable with the awkward silences, the embarrassing moments, the seemingly endless all-nighters, and the pesky little pessimistic voices in your head. They’ll come and go, but the real flex is knowing that in spite of your doubts, you did all of the hard things on your own. 😎👊💥

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⏰ Louise. Runs on her own time and wears her tardiness like a badge of honor. Here’s to the anti-punctual, super-tardy, never-ever-on-time, chronically-late girls’ club 😎

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👩🏻‍🎤 The last punk girl on earth lives in Austin, Texas 🎬 I’m not a fan of saying things like ‘breaking the mold’ or ‘breath of fresh air,’ but I’ll describe Virginia as a ‘force of nature’ any day.

She’s Cuban, an only child—at least that’s how she sticks in my mind. Not the world-revolves-around-me sort, but more in a things-will-be-done-on-my-terms kind of way. The quintessential ‘type A’ girl, one might say.

She kept a lizard pet named Bunny. Never had I met anyone capable of being scary, caring, and funny. One part Miley, two parts Debbie Harris, she thought we were childish, as one would expect. She was ready for life, but we weren’t ready for her.

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Gia: big-brown-eyed, truth-spitting, can’t-commit-to-one-hair-color, lizard-petting, poem-writing, sci-fi-reading kind of girl. Mismatched socks and rescue dogs were made for her.

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🔥 The illusion of control is just another blindfold.

Here’s to taking life in with all of its messy twists and turns, its unrelenting knack for humbling us, and its wonderful capacity for magically turning things around every time, just when we’re about to give up. This one’s a New York babe, for sure. 🗽

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WE CAN’T HOLD ON FOREVER 💜☕️ Sassy little reminder: lovers, cities, friends, family, homes, and memories are only meant to last for so long.

One morning we wake up, messy hair, coffee in hand, unprepared to discover that the big life plans we so carefully made must now veer off course. And that’s okay, that’s the way it goes. The illusion of control is just another blindfold.

The tickle-in-your-stomach thrill of knowing you’re about to leap into the uncertainty of what others like to call ‘destiny’ is exactly what makes our hearts race and our hands shaky.

It’s time to let go: grander and sweeter adventures are yet to come.

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✍️ Ifigenia is not really called Ifigenia. She’s called Maria Eugenia, but more on that in a little bit.

During my little social media break I read. I read a lot, actually; more than I’d ever read in a single year. One of the books I read was “Ifigenia” (or ‘Iphigenia’ in English), a novel written by Teresa de la Parra, the very first female novelist in Venezuela.

The book caused a bit of an uproar when it was first published in the 1920s because it questioned the role of women in Latin American society or, more specifically, in Venezuelan society. At the time, women were raised to fit the mold of the ideal housewife and were not expected to have a career or an interest outside of raising a family.

While the main character, Maria Eugenia, comes off as a spoiled teenager at first, she slowly begins to change as she grows older. When suddenly you realize her irreverence has died down to give way to the pressures and expectations of everyone around her, your heart breaks for her.

But why “Ifigenia”? Well. the book was named after a character in Greek mythology, but I can’t tell you why or else I’d spoil the ending for you. Needless to say, I loved the novel so much that as soon as I’d finished it, I sat down to draw Maria Eugenia and here she is 💜

What’s the last book you absolutely loved? I need a book reco, so let me know.

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🌊 Anyone else drowning in the feels in 2020?

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THE CYCLE • Falling in ❤️ vs. Failing in love. ♻️ My shop is finally live: zizouthekid.threadless.com 😎✨