Could there be a better Vice-President for him? Two for the price of one. No gambles here. The perfect match.

Another great gag from Ken Culotta!

Headed over to Tampa for the Tampa Comic Con for an Inkslinger gathering with Jim Fern and Sioux Hart. A few were part of the event. Fran Matera was showing his great work. To the left is a panel from one of the strips I picked up. Fran was also helping friend Geoff Brenneman raise money for a project Geoff is working on. Greg Vondruska, with his colleague Dan Boyd, also was showing his many comics. Click here to see his work.

Later I met with Inkslinger, John Stevens, for a meal outside Tampa at ABC Pizza where we talked about digital painting, goals in life and politics. The illustration above is a corner of the restaurant.

Today was my friend Richard Lorenz’s 60th BDay! He had a big wing ding at his new digs near the Lake and Seminole borders. Guess what I did? Here’s Jeff, a good gun-toting American! Everybody duck!

After more than five hours of drawing, I only took one photo and it was my next to last drawing. I gotta do better than that!

Volusia County Sheriff’s Mike Dye drove up from Deland to have this painted for his colleague who is retiring after twenty years of public service. Above is a photograph of the watercolor caricature I created over at Chelsea Coffee for Mike today.

I’m also linking this to Illustration Friday, since it’s subject this week is ‘Sail’.

I’ve attacked Miss (ms. just doesn’t sound right) Hilton many, many times. Here I’ll give her a big thumbs up! The few minute film made of her thinking she’s running for President is the best of the political commercials I’ve seen yet. I don’t care for the bad language or the bathing suit thing, but I also can’t ignore some very creative and quick thinking here. McCain and Obama should look to hire whoever came up with this, including Ms. Hilton. Bravo!

Took a trip for tooth cleaning. The lady who cleaned them, Linda, is an Ocala native and have all kinds of connections to Sandra’s family.

When I sketched the biohazardous bag above, I thought it’d be neat to color. After talking to colleague Ed Hall yesterday, I realized I need to try and color some of these sketches sometimes.

Sandra and I headed to Orange County. Her for a conference. Me for a haircut at Jim’s Barber Shop. Unfortunately for me, Jim’s ill and his shears are taking a break, too.

That gave me time I didn’t expect, so I hit the bookstores. Picked up lots of goodies. Below are the best covers. All books I’ll probably never read. I’ll just admire the covers. I really like the layout of ‘Native Stone’. The Frank Lloyd Wright-ish structure with teh red tree-ish image and the placement of the T-square, also with red. All that imagery and the artist puts a watch on the guy. Interesting choices. I wonder why. The artist who created the very bottom art put no watch on the pirate. It seems to me pirates would want to know what time it is…Just wondering…

Later I picked up Sandra and headed to Sweet Tomatoes in Altamonte Springs. There we joined our good friends G.K. Sharman and James L. Saunders. Also joining the healthful buffet was my father. Good talk and plenty of cooking hints from Mr. Saunders.

He’s slipping and sliding on many issues. Oil is the latest.

After taking in the five books about Dean Martin, I thought I’d follow with a Matt Helm book. Donald Hamilton’s ‘The Menacers’ was part of one of Dean Martin’s Helm films. I like the sketchy style used on the Matt Helm covers. Very different from the more full-blown illustrations that were around at the time by folks like Robert McGinnis.

After Helm, I thought maybe I would read five action adventure spy books. I picked up Don Pendleton’s ‘Arizona Ambush’. This book stars the vengeful ‘Executioner’, who was the model for Marvel Comics ‘The Punisher’. It was pretty light and took place in the same general area of sand and heat of the Helm book. ‘The Executioner’ is on a mission to wipe out the mob and each of the series slowly does just that. You can read more about it here. Interesting series. More interesting the direction the publisher took the series after Hamilton moved on. THAT would be an interesting book!

The action adventure stuff is a bit much for me, so I turned to an author I haven’t read before, Ross MacDonald. Ross’ real name was Kenneth Millar. He was going to go under the pseudonym John Ross MacDonald, but another MacDonald was already soaring. The success of author John D. MacDonald had Kenneth drop his first non-name not long after his career started. As you can see by the cover above, this is an early novel of Millars…uh, John…uh, Ross….

What a great cover! No computer here. Look at those expressions. The light trying to make its way through the white cloth. The hand to the throat. There is unfortunately no credit given to the artist, of course.

I was going to go for five fictions as I did the five non-fiction, but caved when I finally found Mark Steyn’s America Alone in the bookstore. More about that when I finish it.

We made our way onto the Big Cypress Reservation to the Billie Swamp Safari. Above is a croc that lives around the swamp buggy ride we took.

Above is a tree, with bucket chapeau, I sketched along the swamp buggy trail.

We also took an airboat ride. I sketched these as the airboat roared along.

Billie Swamp Safari is a terrific place that all Floridians and non-Floridians should make a must-stop!

Later we had dinner with friends Kathy Wolfe, Phyllis Malinksy and the ever-jolly Rob Labby at Tropical Acres Restaurant. Above is Rob entertaining us all.