lavender cowboy art

Popsicles! Get ur popsicles!🍦🪲 Only a few more days to sign up for the August sticker club, featuring this cicada pop holographic sticker!

Direct link to join the club:

🔗 https://ko-fi.com/lavendercowboyart/tiers

All of my links:

Peek at the new version of my carbs girlie sticker (coming soon)! And, of course some photos of Willow, the carbs girlie herself 🤧

Can you blame her? I actually eat my Hawaiian rolls exactly the same way.

I keep finding myself pulled to acrylic markers when practicing my traditional mediums and this piece was no exception! As much as I love them, I still often find myself becoming utterly frustrated during the process. My pieces made with opaque materials, such as acrylics or gouache, often end up so lumpy from thick layers caked on top of each other, be it from excessive detail or color indecisiveness. But in contrast, with linocuts or single color illustrations, I rarely find myself going back and forth on the placement of lights and darks. Color is different. It seems that I never intuitively know from the start of each piece exactly where I want or need each stroke of color to land. Or even which colors to use! It feels like a challenge, where I have to throw a bunch of color down and sort of carve each one away to find what I want to stay. Not so different from my technique with linocuts, I suppose! Regardless, I have a hard time with it and find myself second (and third, and fourth..) guessing my color placements when working with opaque traditional mediums until either the piece just “feels right” to my eyes or I’m simply tired of looking at it. With less opaque mediums (and digital works) I don’t struggle quite as much. My technique for both is to simply layer the colors on using my understanding of color theory to reach the final result. To put it simply, I usually start with the light base color and add the highlights and shadows to each plane, building to the final color from there. With these more opaque mediums it feels like I need to go right to the final color and can’t quite get there from layering ingredients. It took me several really lumpy pieces to fully understand that haha. My goal with these works in my sketchbook is to help my brain problem solve and work out how to skip the excessive layering and still reach my desired point at the end. This piece was definitely helpful (aka it was hard)! Learning color theory has not been easy but I’m enjoying the process (when it doesn’t make me feel like I’m going insane).

Finished up another research logo commission for the Russell Lab! I have some space in my schedule so I’m opening up a few commission slots for these, reach out if you’d like a custom lab logo or critter illustration 🙂

It’s hot outside, I’m screaming for ice cream and the cicadas are screaming for… anyway— figured I’d combine the two with this cicada popsicle for my August Sticker Club! Stay cool (and support an indie artist 😎) this summer by joining my sticker club! Sign ups for this design are open until he melts away (July 29th) 🌞

🔗 www.lavendercowboy.art/links

You don’t have to buy my art to be hot and/or cool, but sharing it with someone who might sure helps a lot and definitely makes u hotter and/or cooler 👉👈

*💌 Sign ups for this design close on July 29th & I’ll be mailing the (human made, holographic, & weatherproof vinyl cicada pop) stickers out to members the first week of August! International mailing available : )

The green bee is a striped sweat bee of the Agapostemon genus & the black bee is a leaf cutter bee within the Megachile genus!

I’ve been seeing so many photos documenting a dashing brown boobie who accidentally made his way to Kansas City, MO. This Caribbean seabird found himself in a landlocked state over 1,000 miles from home and folks aren’t quite sure why he ended up this far north (since even Florida sightings are relatively rare). He seems healthy so there haven’t been any relocation efforts, the hope is that he can rest up before moving on independently. Until then, I hope to keep seeing the photos from birders!

This fella is a gorgeous bird with a lot of character, so I spent some time with him in my sketchbook to do some mixed media work and practice color theory! Have you seen the brown boobie? ✨

Some progress photos:

I’ll be working on getting the new stuff posted to my members-only shop this week / over the next few days before doing a full launch to my regular page at the start of next week :) keep your eyes out for updates!

Just need to count up what I have left from the Ozarks PrideFest and take photos of all of the newer goodies! I am nearly sold out of a few designs (again thank you all so much 🥹) and, since I’ll need to keep some stuff on hand for Pride STL in a couple weeks, I may end up opening up pre-orders for things that I’m out of & those would ship out as soon as I can have them restocked (likely at the start of July). Otherwise i have some other older stuff (mostly small prints/mystery packs) that I’ll be posting as well to clear out — available to members first ofc.

Tomato hornworm caterpillar on a ripening tomato plant 🍅🐛✨

I’ve been experimenting with more opaque traditional mediums and had a blast trying out some new acrylic markers for this one! It tickled my brain so nicely to layer the different colors that make up the tomatoes and caterpillar. Hope you like lookin’ at it!

💌 Mailing out these stickers to the members of my sticker club at the start of July! If you’d like one it’s not too late to join the club - sign ups for this tomato hornworm are open through the link in my bio (and below) until June 29th :)

Dynastes tityus, the Eastern Hercules beetle, is one of the largest beetle species found in North America — they also happen to be my favorite! I originally planned to make a purely ecosystem-focused piece for this species (and I may still do a more scientific-illustration-style piece later). But, as I toyed around with the composition, I realized that I really wanted to make the beetle grub feel like the ‘moon’ and pivoted my focus from there. I still stuck with a more natural theming for the background; where the old tree stump stands as the frequent habitat of this species and the morel mushrooms are meant to build on that forest floor feeling.

Only fluorescent pink and mint color inks were used for this one; all of the deep purple tones are from the intermingling of the two. 🙂 The incredibly vibrant colors are one of my favorite aspects of riso (& the fluorescent colors do indeed glow vibrantly under UV light). I’ve since made quite a few more riso pieces between the two riso shops local to me and have several more in the works. If you can’t tell, I’ve been really enjoying both the riso illustration process and the printed results and, if you’re familiar with my work, you may notice a couple new pieces that haven’t made it to my site yet. Those will be up soon; I’m working on another shop update - stay tuned for the announcement! (or, if you’re a sticker club member, keep your eyes out for the newsletter / discount codes / early access!)

Anyway! Thanks so much for reading! Hope you have a great rest of your day (or start of your morning! or restful night of sleep!) 🤠 see ya again soon?

My fb algorithm has been sharing Mango with me, a baby toucan at the Naples Zoo, who I’ve absolutely adored seeing grow up. Felt like doodling the lil fella and figured I’d share with y’all! Art by yours truly, photo from the Naples Zoo socials!

Featuring a common loon, redear sunfish, and the essence of minnows.

I’m gonna be honest with y’all, I had no idea loons existed until Heated Rivalry… but the “canadian wolf bird” absolutely captivated me and I felt called to illustrate it. Absolutely stunning birds. This one was a bit of a challenge to bring to life (my canvas logged 24 hours of work time haha) but here it is! Swipe down to the end to see a quick timelapse of how much this piece changed throughout my process. Planning to make riso prints and potentiallyyyy stickers - please let me know if you’d be interested in either! Okay bye thank you! ✨

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Howdy! I’m Moth, the person behind Lavender Cowboy Art. I’m a queer illustrator with a background in wildlife biology and my love for wildlife and natural ecosystems often influences my work. Please consider following along if you enjoy my work & would like to see more of it! If not, thank you for checking it out and I hope we cross paths again another time. Safe travels, friend! 🫡

Wood frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus) can be found throughout most of Canada, AK, and the Northeastern and Midwestern US, but survive as far south as GA and as far west as CO. Adult wood frogs are one of the few animals who survive winter by freezing totally solid! 🥶 In early spring they thaw and reanimate, and in many locations you can hear the adults calling through March and early April. Eggs for the next generation generally hatch by May and tadpoles have their legs and will begin emerging as adults by June. Because their survival through winter is essentially a delicate balance of cellular antifreeze, the presence of road salt in their environment can cause defects that lead to fatality. Their breeding takes place in vernal (temporary) pools of water and tadpoles perish if those ponds dry up before they finish developing. It is so fascinating to consider the careful balance of our surrounding ecosystem.

My sticker club for March (now closed) features a wood frog sticker and this piece is the bonus mini print for the month! Check out my post about that design on instagram to hear what a wood frog call sounds like 🙂 Sign ups for the April sticker club, design revealed by mid-April and mailed the first week of May, are open now! Did you miss the March sign ups but want a print of this piece anyway? Let me know, I may make prints available!

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Howdy! I’m Moth, the person behind Lavender Cowboy Art! I’m a queer illustrator with a background in wildlife biology (focused on bumble bee research). My love for wildlife and natural ecosystems often influences my work and I’m slowly but surely working on developing my art style(s). I’m most often drawing critters and have been particularly fond of working with warm but vibrant colors lately. It makes me feel at home. As a disabled queer person myself, i feel that being visible and loud about chronic pain, equal access, and the right to bodily autonomy for all is essential. Sometimes being a little silly about it is the only way to get the message to spread. My art frequently reflects that. Thanks for reading this far, hope we cross paths again another time. Safe travels, friend! 🫡

Happy trans day of visibility to all of my trans siblings! Trans people saved my life and taught me that you can be yourself and still be loved. Trans people in my life taught me that it is possible to feel comfortable in my own skin. My trans friends taught me kindness and tenderness. My journey as a trans person has taught me perseverance, courage, self love.. Today is Trans Day of Visibility to remind folks that trans people are individuals, people, parents, friends, classmates, workers… we aren’t a monolith. And yet, every day legislation is being introduced to ‘remove’ trans people. But remember that, as it always has been and forever will be, no matter how many laws are passed or rights are stripped, you can’t make a trans person cisgender. You can’t erase us.

In honor of TDOV, use code VISIBILTY at checkout for 25% off any items from my pride collection from now until 4/1/26 at 11:59pm CST.