⚜️ UNDERSTORY: This piece began with a fox, another of the animals I wanted to include in my collection of local Virginia fauna. I imagined him curled up quietly beneath a cherry tree, tucked away in a little world of his own.
Once again, my now-indispensable book of historic patterns revealed a bit of hidden magic. I came across an old Japanese design featuring a simple tree, and something about it immediately caught my imagination. I used it as the starting point for the cherry tree, then set about finding the right world for my fox to inhabit.
That turned out to be rather more difficult than I expected. I tried all sorts of backgrounds, including patterns similar to those I’d used in Watership Down and Walk with She Bear, but nothing seemed to work. The fox was there, the tree was there, and yet the whole thing still felt as though it was missing something.
Finally, in a fit of frustration, I wiped the slate clean—or, more accurately, the background—and began doodling. Somewhere in all that aimless scribbling, the hill of grass began to take shape.
And I fell in love with it.
Sometimes the part of a design you struggle with the most turns out to be the part that makes the whole thing come together. Apparently, this fox just wanted a soft grassy glade for nap-time all along.
