An old school friend called last night to catch up, and he brought up the subject of personal passions...so I thought I would lead with one.
Those who know me are aware that I've loved skiing since childhood, usually getting in 20+ days a year, which is less than I once did when I was single. But this season was cut short nation-wide by Covid. (It also caused our week-long family ski trip to Vail Resorts to be cancelled 48 hours before leaving in late March.)
Happily, Arapahoe Basin reopened 14 days ago, (by lottery-based reservation only.) It was one of only three ski resorts in the U.S. to do so, and my daughter and I were greatly tempted to try to go. But then we considered the Covid rules in effect. I have thought of skiing as the perfect social distancing sport...until one gets to the lift line.
Skiing, coming to a stop in a socially distanced lift line and quickly donning a mask - while juggling gloves, goggles, helmets, poles, etc. - would be a strange experience. Additionally, A-Basin's mid mountain lifts are not like the modern widely spaced areas at the big resorts, and I couldn't imagine how they could physically make it work. Many of those upper lifts are accessed via steep runs, with shortened waiting areas. Asking people to suddenly slow/stop and distance themselves six feet from anyone could be dicey if the "line" is lengthy.
The final straw was looking at webcam shots of the snow near the base area...not great. It looked like a negative photo of a golf green with sand traps, open areas everywhere. A-Basin is the highest altitude ski resort in North America, and I have skied there into May & June, as recently as last year, with surprisingly good conditions. But with warm temps last week, what looked great was now less than serviceable.
It turns out that the snow and the awkwardness of all those Covid rules caused A-Basin to quickly close operations a few days later - nearly a month earlier than usual. Oh well. We will just live on the memories of some grand skiing from Dec-Feb this year.
Onward, to some things in the studio.
In addition to the usual corporate client projects, I'm currently illustrating a few books. I thought I'd share an illustration from one of them; a book with a light-hearted theme about families and schools recovering from the Covid-19 situation.
For this book, I'm pairing with an author with whom I have worked previously. (That was a humor book, published a few years ago by Pelican Books.)
This will be featuring a pen & brown ink children's book drawing style, with some splashes of watercolor... A great deal of fun so far.
Love the mask on the dog!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ryan. To expand on your question about humor in your other post below, that's a detail I added after the first draft, and the author liked it. But oddly, drawing it correctly became a bit of a challenge. When I first drew it, the mask was completely covering the dog's mouth and nose, as a human would wear it. But with a large white area and those facial details removed, the dog looked odd...the author and editor agreed. So I added just a bit of the nose and that helped. In this scene I'm thinking that the dog is fed up with a mask and he has pushed it partially loose, just as a dog might do.
ReplyDelete