Cartooning

#Inktober #9 – My inked cartoon of the Coral Castle, Homestead, Florida.

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Oct.09, 2018, under Cartooning, Florida Restaurants

#Inktober #9 – Coral Castle, Homestead, Florida.

The Coral Castle in Homestead was suggested for the Swampy’s Florida characters to visit for inktober. Here’s Swampy, Trilby, Zuber, Alva and Ortona the egret hanging around, probably the best known sculpture at the Coral Castle, the hand carved stone moon.

Edward Leedskalnin made use of part of the foundation of Florida, coral rock, to carve sculptures by himself without using machinery. The huge effort was a tribute for a lost love that Edward never re-acquired. He sculpted 1,100 tons of rock for the rest of his life. He also moved it all somehow. He moved all of his rock formations to it’s current location along US 1 to get nearer to an audience.

67 years later the audience continues to come and, if you haven’t been, Swampy recommends a visit to a most unusual demonstration of love.

Here’s the Coral Castle website:

https://coralcastle.com

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#Inktober #4 – Illustration along the trail in Ravine Gardens State Park in Palatka, Florida!

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Oct.05, 2018, under Cartooning, Illusration

#Inktober #4

Swampy and the gang along the trail in Ravine Gardens State Park in Palatka, Florida!

Jack Owen suggested Ravine Gardens, one of Florida’s earliest parks. The image I drew places the Swampy gang into a part of the park that i recently took a photograph of. Much of the structures in the park were built by the Federal Civil Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration. Both organization provided jobs to those out of work during the Depression. The wall and steps in the illustration were built by the organizations.

Feel free to leave below a Florida location you’d like to see me draw about. I’ve still got spots open for the month.

Video to come.

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ROBbing a Few Minutes video: Inking #Inktober #2 cartoon!

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Oct.03, 2018, under Cartooning

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#Inktober #2 – Swampy’s Florida at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area at Flagler Beach.

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Oct.02, 2018, under Cartooning

#Inktober #2

Swampy’s Florida at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area at Flagler Beach.

Swampy and the gang encounter the ghost of Gamble Rogers!

Feel free to list Florida locations you’d like to see me draw the gang at for Inktober!

Melanie King recommended Flagler Beach where the Gamble Rogers park is part. The park is named for Gamble Rogers, one of Florida’s great folk troubadours. Through his music and story telling he created Oklawaha County and a slew of characters that inhabited the fictitious area of Florida he created.

Gamble died where the park is trying to save a young person drowning. Unfortunately, Gamble died a hero.

Gamble’s music is a bit hard to come by these days. As is so much of Florida folk.
One reliable place to find it is at my friend Peter B. Gallagher’s Florida FOLK SHOW on WMNF radio and online.
Peter also has weekly live Florida folk in St Petersburg on Tuesday night. Check the page to learn more.

I have video of the artwork being inked I’ll post later.

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#Inktober #1

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Oct.01, 2018, under Cartooning

#Inktober #1

I’m starting on time this year! Let’s see if I can make all 31 days. It will be tough. i have an extremely busy month ahead.Many of these will be from the road.

I figured this year to have my Swampy’s Florida characters be a part of the illustrations. But I want to include you all, too!

Please post places below, current or in the past, around Florida and i’ll build a list of 30 locations to place Swampy, the swamp ape,Trilby, the baby alligator, Zuber, the cat, Alva the mouse,and maybe a few others.

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Here’s one of my ‘Perelman’ comic strips. More to come.

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Sep.24, 2018, under Cartooning

I’ll post one every week or so.

I’ve been meaning to post some of my ‘Perelman’ comic strips I did many years ago. This first one was prior to the format I put together for future panels. Though this, too, was based in the actual location, the original one, of the Downtown Orlando Farmer’s Market. the market was Saturdays under the Interstate 400 overpass near Church Street. Each person drawn were real people and booth was the actual setup. In the second panel i wanted to include a mother and children shopping. So, that’s my sister-in-law, at the time, Nancy and her children, John and Porter. Charles Bailey, I don’t know if you all knew about this. 🙂 I’ll be posting ones with Amber, Taylor and Jacob, too.

The comic strip ‘Perelman’ was published by the Orlando Sentinel in it’s ‘Downtown Orlando Monthly’ magazine for four years in the 1990s. Many thanks to Gina Bowden-Pierce and T. Allan Smith editing my frantic way of producing these.

I like a challenge. So I decided to morph the strip from a traditionally drawn strip to something that really didn’t exist before. My concept was that the strip existed in the real world using photographs for backgrounds and other photos of physical objects that the characters would hold. I’ve been told I was the first to attempt sequential storytelling this way. I admit, it was a hell of a lot of work.

The characters were all illustrated. This meant that however the character was drawn, if it moved holding an object, the object would need photos of that item at angles to fit the movement. It was a bit difficult. At the time the strip was being produced in the mid-90s, digital cameras were not very available. So it was lots and lots and lots of photos. Choosing the best for the background and the objects. It was extremely time consuming.

The strip ended when the Orlando Sentinel ended the entire very successful publication due to technical issues with the City of Orlando. Both wanted the strip to continue in other ways but I felt that impractical.

By the way, the characters reflected my great admiration of the humor writers of the early part of the 20th century. Perelman was named after writer S.J. Perelman. There are also characters named after Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman and others of the famed literary gathering of wits known as the Algonquin Round Table.

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My colored version of my pirate alligator illustration!

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Aug.17, 2018, under Cartooning, Illusration

Here’s the color version of the pirate alligator that’ll be a 5′ standup folks can get photos with on August 25th at Julianne’s Coastal Cottage in Mount Dora. She’s theming her store after pirates (She’s a huge Gasparilla fan) for Mount Dora’s Seafood Festival.

I’ll also be there live drawing a large critter pirate illustration you can add to.

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My pirate alligator illustration for a 5′ standup! – August 15th, 2018

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Aug.16, 2018, under Cartooning, Illusration

Another day! Another pirate alligator!
This will be 5’ tall in full color at Julianne’s Coastal Cottage August 25th to get a photograph with during the Seafood Frstival in Mount Dora, Florida.
I will also be there drawing!

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1 of my new illustrations for my Swampy’s Florida series.

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Aug.06, 2018, under Cartooning, Illusration

I’ve been hunkered down all weekend reworking the second of my Swampy’s Florida books, Gatorama, for reprinting. Was planning to extensively redraw the illustrations, but my slow-poke efforts at re-laying out the book ate all of the time. Here is a piece I did redo.

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A bunch of artwork done Thursday! Here’s a peek!

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Jul.20, 2018, under Cartooning

Another stop at TeaStori (Was Lollicup) and another pile of artwork finished!
Pencils and inks to an array of projects. Now to scan and prepare the much, much longer task of adding color to most.

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From my live cartoon art on @Periscope Tuesday night: An eagle, an elephant & Selfishness.

by Rob Smith, Jr. on Jul.11, 2018, under Cartooning

Tuesday night I did a live Periscope broadcast in which I worked on a project and then got viewers to contribute to a drawing I made up based on responses. The great Jonathan Hoenig started it off with – Selfishness, as a good objectivist would. 🙂 Then two individual responses, eagle and elephant, came through. I missed who sent those. A fellow, who went by the moniker J.D., also commented.

Here is the result….

I hope to broadcast again next Tuesday night around 7-8pm. I’ll post here if I do and you want to tune in.

I, also, hope to post the video soon.

By the way, if you want to learn more about investing and a unique philosophical approach to do it, tune into Jonathan Hoenig’s broadcasts on his Facebook page and Periscope Saturday mornings around 11:00am EST.

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