Happy Thanksgiving! Oh wait it’s January the 7th. Right, well this sketch drawn on the iPad in my mother-in-law’s back yard in Santa Rosa was done on Thanksgiving 2021, the sky was very blue though the light was a little muted so shadows were soft, and we did absolutely zero Black Friday shopping the next day because ha, no more of that. Remember when they’d get up at 4am to stand in the cold outside Best Buy or Target? Those days are gone. Thanksgiving as you know is the big American holiday where you eat turkey, mash potatoes, cranberry sauce, all things I love, but I really love stuffing, and I really love gravy. Stuffing and gravy, oh man. I love a roast.

I’ve drawn this back yard before a couple of times, and it has changed a lot over the years, but here’s a very early one from way back in early 2007, when it looked very different. That’s the old dog Brutus asleep there, long since departed. That tree is gone too. This was when I drew in a WH Smith cartridge paper sketchbook from England, before I started using Moleskine sketchbooks, long before any iPads, and I was still figuring out watercolours, I was still using a fairly cheap but cheerful set from the university bookstore. I can tell exactly the colours used (payne’s gray mixed with ultramarine and purple lake) to get that specific shadow on the door, because I still sometimes mix those three to get the colour of shadow I want, and it was a bit of trial and error for this one at the time. I enjoy looking at the sketches from those first couple of years in the US, and I am glad I felt it so important to draw them. I still do.