I had a marvelous Christmas after the rush up to it, including commissions and home sale. Afterwards, which is my favorite part of the end of the year, I was able to start doing the work that’s been calling my name through all the business craziness. I’m deeply grateful for all the business craziness, but I’m also grateful for the place where I can quietly get up each morning and do actual art that I’ve been dreaming of. This year that is the Mr. Darcy book. I am really ready to get this finished and see if and where the world takes it. To that end, I packed it all up (see above) and brought it out to Washington State with me. I’ve got a couple of weeks to really buckle down on it every morning and see if I can shepherd it along to a finished state. I can’t show the individual pages here, since I’m hoping to get it published (which sounds very familiar from my summer work), so I’ve been quiet here about my work lately.

Through this period I have also been missing my sketchbook, though, and here is a sketch I just did this morning. It’s the more distant view (across housetops) from my work table here in Washington, and the mist was too beguiling to pass up. I took a break and did this quick sketch. Now back to work...