About Us
Two countries. Two creative brains. Questionable amounts of sarcasm.
The Wolf & The Butterfly started with two people who probably should have gone to bed earlier.
We met playing The Elder Scrolls Online, where late-night gaming sessions had a habit of stretching toward four in the morning. Kometes, a French-speaking Canadian artist, was often the last person still hanging around with Michael, an American with an overactive idea factory and apparently no responsible bedtime.
Games led to conversations. Conversations led to friendship. Friendship eventually became a relationship, and somewhere along the way we discovered that despite growing up in different countries, speaking different first languages and having very different life experiences, we were remarkably good at finding things to be curious about together.
It Started With a Pencil
The Wolf & The Butterfly didn't begin as a T-shirt shop.
Kometes had been making art long before there was a business. She grew up drawing and painting and works primarily in realism, particularly animals and the natural world. Acrylic paint is one of her favorite mediums, but her work also includes drawing, colored pencil, digital art and other techniques.
She also spent roughly two decades working professionally with plants. She doesn't necessarily consider that part of her artistic training. Michael isn't so sure. Her wildlife is frequently surrounded by remarkably detailed leaves, mushrooms, flowers and forest life, and years spent paying attention to how things actually grow probably didn't hurt.
Our first products together were elaborate hand-drawn coloring books. Kometes created page after page or original artwork while Michael handled much of the technical, marketing and business side.
Sixty hand-drawn pages at a time, however, is a rather ambitious way to make everything.
As we explored other ways of bringing our ideas and artwork into the world, we discovered print-on-demand.
And T-shirts changed everything.
Why T-Shirts?
Because art doesn't always have to stay on a wall.
A painting can transform a room, but a T-shirt gets to leave the house.
It can tell somebody what you love, what you do on the weekends, where you've been, what makes you laugh, or exactly how questionable your sense of humor is. It can start a conversation with a stranger or make another person across the room think, Yep. This person gets it.
That's what we love about them.
Sometimes that means wearing a beautiful piece of wildlife art.
Sometimes it means announcing Paddle Faster, I hear Banjo Music to everyone at the grocery store.
Both seem equally important.
Kometes Is the Order. Michael Is the Chaos.
There are two fairly distinct creative fingerprints around here.
Kometes is the artist behind much of our detailed wildlife and nature work. Animals are a favorite subject, often surrounded by the plants, mushrooms and little natural details that make her work unmistakably hers. Her original artwork has included paintings, murals, drawings and coloring books, and elements from her hand-drawn work continue finding new lives in designs, stationery, bookmarks, printable art and other projects.
Michael's process is somewhat less orderly.
Ideas tend to arrive from everywhere: an old joke, an expression, something on a sign, a hobby he's learning about, a strange combination of words, a memory, something somebody says, or the sudden conviction that an idea is stupid enough that it absolutely needs to become a T-shirt.
He's more comfortable with words than paintbrushes. Years spent working around people also left him with an appreciation for language, humor, reactions and the peculiar little things different people identify with.
Where Kometes might spend hours getting the details of an animal or leaf just right, Michael can see fifty possible directions for an idea before he's finished the first one.
Which explains quite a bit about this website.
Two Studios With the Door Open
We don't make every design together.
Kometes needs to connect with what she's creating, so Michael doesn't hand her a list of things and tell her what to draw. Michael follows his own ideas wherever they lead. We each make things independently, show each other what we're working on, ask for opinions, occasionally receive an opinion we weren't hoping for, and keep going.
But our work crosses over all the time.
Michael might work with one of Kometes's illustrations and develop the typography or wording around it. Kometes might help solve a visual problem or make changes Michael can't accomplish himself. Sometimes a piece moves back and forth between us until neither person's contribution can be neatly separated from the other.
Even though our actual workspaces are in two different countries, we're constantly sharing images, streaming screens, trading ideas and showing each other whatever we're excited about that day.
Getting Kometes to laugh is still one of Michael's favorite indications that a ridiculous idea might actually be working.
We Use Whatever Works
Creativity doesn't have to begin with one particular tool.
Around here, a project might start with acrylic paint, pencil, a hand-drawn illustration, photography, typography, licensed graphic elements, digital design tools, or an idea scribbled down before it disappears.
We also use modern AI-assisted creative tools for brainstorming, research, design elements and parts of the creative process. Sometimes a finished piece involves one medium. Sometimes it involves several.
We're much more interested in the finished idea than defending the borders between the tools used to make it.
What matters to us is doing something with those tools that feels like ours, fixing the things that aren't working, and eventually knowing when to stop.
That last part may be the hardest.
There's Probably Something Here That Isn't for You
And that's intentional.
If Michael only made shirts he personally wanted to wear, this would be a considerably stranger store.
We don't expect everyone to share the same hobbies, humor, interests or taste. That's precisely why you'll find so many different things here.
A wildlife lover might stop for one of Kometes's animals. Someone else might find a joke that reminds them immediately of a friend. Another person might find something about archery, disc golf, traveling, teaching, fishing, positivity, fitness or some wonderfully specific interest we happened to wander into.
Not every design has to be for everybody.
We'd rather make the one that makes somebody stop and say:
These guys get me.
The Wolf & The Butterfly
The name itself grew naturally from Kometes's artwork.
Before there was a business, the wolf was already part of her artistic identity. When we began turning that creative work into something larger, she added the butterfly, another symbol she had long been drawn to.
The two belonged together.
So did the name.
There isn't an elaborate mythology behind it, and we're not going to invent one now just because this is an About page.
Sometimes something simply feels right.
Made Across Two Countries
We're an American and a Canadian who met through online gaming and somehow ended up building an art business together from roughly 1,800 miles apart.
The distance means we've each brought different experiences into what we make. Different places, different terminology, different cultural quirks, even different ways of saying things become things we can teach each other and occasionally turn into ideas.
We're both relentlessly curious. We research things because they're interesting. We learn new skills because we want to know how they work. We take photographs. We wander through the woods. We notice animals, plants, places and peculiar little details.
And sooner or later, some of those things make their way back into the work.
That's one reason The Wolf & The Butterfly probably never will fit neatly into one little box.
We wouldn't particularly enjoy it if it did.
It's Really Not About Us
If we're doing this right, you shouldn't leave The Wolf & The Butterfly thinking about Michael and Kometes.
You should leave having laughed at something stupid.
Maybe you stopped for a minute because a piece of artwork was beautiful. Maybe you discovered something about one of your hobbies. Maybe you found a design that reminded you immediately of somebody you know.
And every once in a while, we hope you find your shirt.
The one that makes you stop scrolling.
The one you can't wait to wear.
The little piece of art that tells the world something about who you are before you've said a word.
That's why we keep making them.
And wherever this thing takes us next, we hope to keep doing what got us here in the first place:
Exploring. Learning. Laughing. Making things.
And turning whatever we find along the way into art.
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