This summer, as usual, I went to Camp Olson, this time as a staff member finally. I brought along my banjo, of course, and it got a lot of use. The final week of camp, I had the privilege to have a cabin with my brother and Byrnes, one of my counselors when I was a camper and the man who inspired me to pick up banjo. My cabin that week was super easy to take care of because they were awesome kids and never fought, so we had a lot of free time for banjo. I learned a few songs, including my now-favorite, John Hartford’s Steam Powered Aeroplane. I listened to a lot of Hartford’s banjo stuff, and then eventually Byrnes sent me this video of a young John Hartford playing Sunshine Lady. It was pretty singlehandedly the inspiration for this piece.

I’m really happy with this piece as a whole, but there’s one part I really really hate, and that’s that stupid splatter. I’ve never had anything like that happen with a marker before. I was just coloring away and a huge drop just dripped from the brush tip. Needless to say, I was pretty angry because I really like the plaid aside form that. Also, if you look pretty close you’ll see a few similarly green dots. Those are from the half-assed airbrushing I did around the edges and then photoshopped out. That was just a bad choice. I don’t think they detract too much from the piece overall, though.

I had a lot of fun doing the flowers in this. I took most of them from various banjo songs that I like, like Orange Blossom Special and Blackberry Blossom. The poppies are just because I really like them, though. I had lot of fun with this.