The Happy Gardener

It's a lovely autumn, here in Oregon. The leaves are turning colors gloriously, on most of the trees. A couple of months ago -- shortly after my last post here -- I exchanged the existential angst of being between freelance jobs, for the much more visceral angst of finding that a freelance job I had taken on was going to be much more work than I had anticipated. We won't talk about the money. I finally got to the project to a point where I could get out of the house, yesterday morning, and take an actual walk, and look at the trees changing color, and smell the crisp fall air, rich with woodsmoke and other scents I couldn't identify. It's astounding, the way little things like that can sooth your soul, when you've been doing without them for a month or two.

I might have a little time for myself to draw, now, and I have some ideas simmering on the back burners of the cast-iron wood stove of my mind, but nothing to show yet. Here's the last drawing I was able to do in my sketchbook, before the walls of the last project closed in around me:



And here's one of the illustrations I did for this last project:

It's actually for an iPhone/iPad app, a rendition of Gulliver in Lilliput, for kids with reading disabilitie, to be published by Brain Integration, LLC. Here, Gulliver is using some handmade stools to step from the outer court to the inner court of the palace of the monarch of Lilliput, who wants to show off his palace to Gulliver.

Here's another -- Gulliver being introduced to the monarch's family.