SHORT INSOMNIACS

This account is where I’ll be answering questions from now on if you ever want to get in touch with me! <3

Far from all the urban sprawl, the darkness stirred, and said– “You’ve given up your teeth and tongue to some cruel voice in your head.”

- wolfchops -

◐ your anxiety thinks it’s protecting you ◑

Hey guys! I’ve had a lot of people asking about the kind of music that inspires my art, so here are a couple of the playlists I’ve been listening to while I work:

Crisp Autumn vibes and a little bit of mystery. The smell of dead leaves, wet wheat, and far-away smoke. Listen here: Bright Leaves, Cold Air

Eerie tunes and strange sounds from the dark. A black dog at the edge of your headlights, a pale hand reaching out from the tall grass. Radio static in the middle of nowhere. Listen Here: It’s Dark Out

are there hazy memories that still rise up to haunt you?

there’s something in the house on Lark Street.

Aries: A veil hangs, atom-thin, over your head and shoulders. Some nights a voice ripples through it, muffled, calling the name you bore in some other world. You’ll pause, just for a moment, as if you remembered something and forgot it, all at once.

Taurus: You’re changing slowly. Pavement grows harsh against your feet, and the sharp angles in buildings and streets become strange to your eyes. The loamy forest floor bore your footprints one thousand years ago, and awaits your return. This ill-fitting body cannot keep you captive forever.

Gemini: The ghosts in your lungs turn restless, and you’ll hear their strained voices each time you exhale. They’ll urge you towards dark trees and rainy parking lots after nightfall. These are only passengers—remember this life is yours, and you may walk where you choose.

Cancer: In the far away hills, there stands a deer which shares your breath and blood. It hears each word you speak, knows the scent of your skin, feels every aching bone. Its body is a vessel, and it turns about in endless circles on the slick moss, waiting for your call.

Leo: Overcast skies whisper to you and thick clouds churn overhead in the direction you walk. You will be the first to understand their warnings, sent down through chilled air that prickles your flesh. You’ll know what approaches, but only just before it arrives.

Virgo: After dark, a house appears on the horizon, black and angular with impossible geometry. Yellow light streams from its windows and hazy figures flicker and flow from room to room. One of them is shaped like you, and beckons from the open door. Don’t look at it for long.

Libra: Phantom limbs stretch out from your body, appearing and vanishing in ways you feel but cannot see. Their long, timid fingers reach into a sightless void, searching the unseen spaces. Do not let them travel far, and pull away when you feel something reaching back.

Scorpio: A strange musk and the creaking floor in the next room tells you that you’re not alone. They’re coming closer than they have before, but you’ve known these specters since childhood, and remember them along the roadside at night—just beyond the headlights, eyes button-round and gleaming wetly.

Sagittarius: Crows will hang pine boughs at your window, and watch how you receive them from afar. Bring them inside, braid them into a ring, and place it under your pillow as you sleep. You will travel with these birds in dreams, black and glossy and pure, and wake with the smell of smoke and resin in your hair.

Capricorn: New thoughts will come to you, sprouting tender and pale from the cloudy water in your head. They grow toward the light with a yearning you feared was gone. Rest beside windows, and strange blossoms will unfurl behind your eyes.

Aquarius: In a damp thicket you’ll find clumps of dark hair, tangled and pressed into the earth in the shape of a rabbit’s head. Encircle it with stones and pile soft dirt atop it, but be careful not to disturb its pattern. It will protect you if kept intact, but it is a curse if pulled apart.

Pisces: Animals weep in distant woods, and cry your name with voices never meant to speak. These sounds will trouble your heart, set it thrumming like a moth pressed under a hand, beg you to follow. Try not to listen—they lie beyond a threshold you cannot return from.

Aries: A hundred eyes lie hidden beneath your skull, always searching, gazing, upward and downward but never ahead. Their knowledge comes to you in dreams and fills you with strange power. Try a new restaurant this week.

Taurus: A goat’s jawbone will surface from your carpet, and the floor around it will blacken slowly. Let it cool for eight hours, then wear it on a string—against your skin, close to the heart. It is a gift and you must accept it.

Gemini: Your soul is split between your body, and the body of a lean wild dog. You know where to find it, but do not go there. You will not recognize yourself, and one part of you may destroy the other.

Cancer: The quiet tapping at your window means someone is coming, or has already arrived. Leave a lawn chair on the ground outside tonight—they will be weary and smeared with a pungent tar, and have much to tell you.

Leo: A hot soup with squash and rosemary will soothe the aching in your chest, and your teeth will finally stop growing. Breathe. Sleep deeply if you can. This stage is over, but another will begin soon.

Virgo: Black shrouds float at the corner of your eye, and flicker away when you turn to look at them. These are old friends, and with careful blurring of your vision, you will come to see their faces—bone-white and smiling through the dark cloth.

Libra: At the stroke of midnight a lamb will stand, bleating, beside your bed. Reach out and tangle your fingers in its wild wool, let it pull you from your sheets, slip into its trembling chest and sleep there as it paces the halls in the dark. When you wake up, you’ll be well-rested and ready to face the day.

Scorpio: Seventeen blackbirds and one robin will appear at dusk. Chase the robin away—invite the blackbirds inside. Make peppermint tea and sing to them in a foreign tongue. They’ll vanish at dawn and take your fears with them.

Sagittarius: Wait at your open door at 11pm and stare into the night. The distant sound of wind chimes and tires turning on wet gravel will transform you. Leap into the dark. Run for hours on your long limbs, and chase whatever moves—but don’t forget the way back home.

Capricorn: You will awake at 3am atop an unfamiliar roof. The moon is hot-white in the sky, but the yard below is shrouded in darkness. Something waits for you there. Do not climb down before the sun rises.

Aquarius: Your eyes are like searchlights in a murky sea, and passersby will notice this rare quality in the gloom. New friends will come easily to you—enchanted, terrified, helpless in your blinding gaze.

Pisces: When you cup water in your hands, its surface vibrates with an unearthly song. Some days its beauty will make you weep—on others it will wail with an ancient grief that only you can understand. Be careful when washing your face.

these dreams will carry on past sleep, to soothe your waking hours.

Hi folks! I’ve had a few people recently ask me what kind of music I enjoy listening to, and I’m pretty bad at describing genres so I just threw a bunch of my favorite songs/artists into a Spotify playlist for anyone interested! You can listen here: Snack Mix

// F I E R C E  B O Y //

Aries: Beauty awaits you where others will not see it. It gleams on the surface of a stagnant canal; you will feel it in the coolness of loamy soil and the scratching, toiling insects. It calls you into the rustling green, and begs you to sink forever in the reeds.

Taurus: On ink-black nights, your spirit slips through your bones and walks free. It wanders in its thousand silent forms, passes ghostly below cedar trees and across rolling plains. It returns to fill your head with animal memories, raw and alive with longing.

Gemini: Something has followed you, one part gnawing and another sighing, full of mournful sound that makes the hair on your nape prickle like a cornered dog’s. To its eyes you are a hazy ghost of familiar scent and color—it is afraid, too, and alone, and only seeks comfort from you.

Cancer: A roaring black horizon stretches along your tender spine, just below the skin. It distorts sound and memory, turns bird song into ancient tongues, and from the other side you can feel something searching, pressing, seeking a way through.

Leo: When the call comes, it will ring out from nowhere—a low cry buzzing through the air after dark. Your blood and bones will remember what it means even if you do not; follow their lead as they pull toward the door and the yawning night beyond.

Virgo: Black fur will begin appearing, tangled in trees and brush, meant for your eyes only. Collect it where you find it, hide the lush dark tufts in a secret pouch and keep it close at hand. It will protect you when its owner arrives in the shape of a beast, beautiful but wrong, like a limb twisted out of place.

Libra: As you sleep, a lean dark figure approaches, tall and stooped at your bedside. Its hands are cold and damp, dappled with sap, grass sprouts breaking through skin. It leaves a familiar branch by your side before departing. Perhaps now you can remember the way back.

Scorpio: Clear days blur the boundary between your skin and the brisk air. High in a pine, a hawk tucks strands of your hair into the lining of its nest, and its chicks dream of you, of your voice and hands, unknowing, forgotten on waking.

Sagittarius: A narrow farm shed sits abandoned in an open field; it’s been many years but the gift that was left for you still rests inside. Pull down the damp-rotten door and find it in a tangle of oak branches on the concrete floor, dried leaves humming over the flesh of your second body.

Capricorn: Look up when flocks of birds are in the sky—they have been sent to tell you something. In the shifting sea of starlings you will see the beauty and terror to come, and crows stand by to warn you when the danger draws close. Keep seeds in your pocket; your allies are always near at your side.

Aquarius: A juniper will grow beneath your bed, its thin scrub branches spilling out onto the floor, dotted with clusters of berries whose dusty blue surface conceals something, like a figure shifting behind frosted glass. Tend to it carefully, and you will see clearly what lies beyond their muted veil.

Pisces: A wilderness begins in your chest, slowly at first and then growing vast, your heart swallowed in the trees. You must walk there to learn, to make sense of the strange beasts who flicker between the trees, to uncover the weeping leviathan deep in its glacial lakes.

It’s that time again! I’ve made a new set of hi-res phone wallpapers/lockscreens from some of my latest illustrations, free to use if you’d like to! (Mobile users can find a link to download the full-size files in my FAQ) ♥

This is a donut turtle, obviously! It will be available soon and trust me, there will be more of these for sure. 🐢 🍩