This little sketch has a story.

I planned and worked for the decade of the 90s to be self-employed and work at home. My goal in this wasn’t just to be my own boss, in fact that wasn’t even part of my consideration. I worked as a graphic designer but as a creative person I did much more than that. I was working to develop my talents as a visual artist and a photographer, I have a degree in English with a minor in writing and while I plied the technical writing part of it I longed for the time for creative writing. I enjoy playing the piano and singing and wanted to carry on with so many more of my creative activities.

I found the job I was in, and most others in this field, to be dead end in expectations and income. Creative jobs aren’t really creative, at least not most of the time, unless you’re in a higher position or in a studio with customers who expected a high level of creativity. I hadn’t seen a future in exclusively design but as a freelancer on the side I found a lot of potential for the varied creative challenges I craved whether it be writing, illustration, design, editing, product photography or any combination of those and more with customers whose business or activity I believed in and supported and whose time I enjoyed.

But most of all, I knew that I could chink out time for my own work, my visual art and writing and music and other activities so that I could keep growing as a creative person.

My day of freedom

December 31, 1999 was my last day at my longtime day job. January 1, 2000 was what I have always called my day of freedom. I had set myself up, saved money, set up a retirement, found health insurance, and after working a day job and then my evening job as a freelancer for just as many hours, I had the time to stop and…sketch the snowy woods.

In this case I was on the return trip from my former employer, as I picked up overflow work from my former boss from time to time and had stopped in to meet with her. On the way home, I had the time and took a detour through one of my favorite local parks, my sketchbook and pencils, pens and charcoal always at hand, and did this simple sketch for its own sake, and also to celebrate my newfound freedom just five weeks along.

About “Light Woods” 

I framed this little sketch for my 2004 exhibit Winter White, and sold it there. I didn’t list the art on this site because there wasn’t too much interest in it before I built this site.

But in 2008 I did print sets of notecards, notepads and notepaper using this sketch and other extemporaneous sketches from those years called “An Eye on the Sparrow,” since sparrows appeared pretty often in those sketches. I never added the cards and paper to this site, which I began building in 2016, because even then note cards and note paper weren’t really a thing anymore with electronic communications. Cards and paper communications are coming back in use now, though. I have a small quantity of each the note cards, note pads and note paper so I will probably take the time to add them.

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