"It Came Without Packages, Boxes Or Tags..."

In what's become a Jeopopolis tradition, it's come time to show off the tree. When we bought our house in 2005 – after 11 years of apartment living for me – I was especially eager for two things: kids on Halloween and a tree at Christmas. Five Christmases later, the novelty has yet to wear off. If anything, the anticipation of a sweet-smelling conifer in the living room is getting stronger; this year we procured ours earlier than ever.

After the out-and-out fresh, local red pine monsters of 2007 (shunted to yard duty to accommodate New Year's wedding guests) and 2008 (so big, Kerry found it intimidating), we went smaller and more traditional, opting for a pre-triangularized balsam fir from the timeless Boy Scouts tree lot in River Heights.

Merry Christmas, one and all.

219: I've Come Undone

It took my friend Amy's Illustration Friday theme suggestion of undone to pop up in my email yesterday to realize a) I haven't completed an IF assignment in weeks, and b) I still have a whole wadge of incomplete MayDay illustrations from last spring that I never expounded on. Combined, this is the reason for the tubes-unclogging stream of sketchery you just scrolled through to at last reach this paragraph of explanation.

These are all unfinished (undone) works from the once-a-day creativity marathon my wife and I went through earlier this year (me, drawing; she, writing) – sketches dating from the first to final day of May. A select handful of other pieces from this adventure passed lovingly and thoughtfully through digital post-production to show up here since then (click here to see the results). But not this undone crew, who, once June arrived, did not see the light of day again – until now. The year is almost through, and, nuts to Photoshop, they need airing out.

Click on these links to see any of them larger. They are, from top to bottom: cowboy singer/troubador Pop Wagner, a vulturine guineafowl from the Assiniboine Park Zoo, my sister's dog Kayla, an unexplainable pen-and-watercolour skeletal bird of some sort, a big fat prairiedog and a toucanet (both from the zoo as well).