The leaves are falling outside the window already, and I find myself wistfully missing the fry oil and stomped-grass smell of the county fair.
Even though our local county fair has come and gone by September, there’s something about this time of year that reminds me of the carnival. Maybe it’s because I’m still harvesting a bunch late-blooming peppers from my own garden. It could be my love of the spooky carnival trope in books like Something Wicked This Way Comes, Geek Love, and Johannes Cabal. Either way, I found myself spending my off-hours this past week on this digital painting this illustration of a fairground coming to life at twilight!
This was just a product of an inspiration photo of a concession stand and a desire to transport myself, in little moments between fiddly work in Adobe Illustrator, to a slightly different place and time. I’ve worked on it for about nine hours or so, and I’m calling it “finished” – although I don’t have any plans for it. There’s some wonky stuff about it, but it was a really nice piece to transition me mentally into autumn.