Posted by bzedan on Jan 27, 2025
Image description: A calendar page for February. The right hand side is the calendar-calendar, while on the left is a digital illustration showing layered vignettes of things people do in February: staying cozy, eating chocolate, giving valentines. There is also a landscape above the vignettes showing a moody-blue cloudy mountain range, flanked by violets and primrose. End ID.
Hooray I did it! I actually finished the Labours of the Months project I started in 2023. I absolutely uploaded it with "2024" in the url, but hey whatever. The dates are correct for this year!! I've shared January already, so here's February (which it'll be soon enough anyway).
Give it a click-a-roo, there are some calendar pages for you!
If you're a paying supporter, I'll have a little post up in a bit with a download link for the large, printable version. But the small version (which isn't that small) is free for everyone anyway. I wrote up a little bit about what is going on in each month, and included the (overly descriptive) image descriptions that originally accompanied the posts on Patreon/Comradery as I finished them. It delighted me to include that as a txt README file, haha.
Here's the opening bit:
Historically, the Labours of the Month were basically pastoral scenes of what folks were doing that month, accompanied by some zodiac signs. They're very fun stuff and the content of how May was for hawking and courtly love says a good bit about the priorities of the people a set of schemes were for, and what life was for them. Something I noticed while reading about Labours of the Month is how there were months that were more about ease, because it's not all planting and harvesting.
In the game Pentiment, it is noted at one point that the life of the common man no longer matches the life depicted in the cycles. I got thinking on that a bit and was like "what would the Labours of the Month be for my queer little west coast set, then?" And this is the result. I've gone into a bit of what is in each cycle below.
Each month took a pride flag as an inspiration for character colours and story. Rather than the zodiac signs, I decided to use the birth month flowers, their mismatch with month and blooming season almost as a contrast to the local plants I put in the illustrations themselves. The landscape view is one I see every day of the San Gabriel mountains, watching them change in the light of each season has been a joy for years now.
Anyway! On to more projects, more crossing things off my to-do list and more finishing long-unfinished things!
Crossposted with Patreon