Swampy’s Rob Smith, Jr. Is a member of Orlando Remembered that places displays around Orlando of the history of the areas involved with the display location. This newest display is in a congested development called Baldwin Park. The development land was once Orlando’s original airport, Orlando Municipal Airport, and military base, Orlando Air Base, for the Army- Air Corps.

The municipal airport land became the military base at the start of U.S. Involvement with the war in Europe that would be known as World War II. After the war the land was split north and south. The southern part, south of Colonial Drive, went back to being the Orlando Municipal Airport, being renamed Herndon Aitport. The north part stayed with the, soon ti be formed, Air Force.

The base stayed active as an air base until just before transforming into the Orlando Naval Training Center in 1968. Boot camp for those coming into the Navy was a main thrust if the base.

The Navy shuttered the base officially in 1999. Not long after the land was basically given to developers from Chicago who created a Chicago themed mixed-use development on the former military site.

This display has a terrific time line that goes through most of this, along with photos and a few artifacts.

Should note here that Rob was born near this dispkay, at 1313 Meeting Place, when it was still the Army Air Force Base.

It’s the Christmas time of year where I tend to find myself in a rash of Christmas parties entertaining with caricatures. Tonight was one such night in Melbourne. Here are a few I drew there. At the bottom is a photo of one of the many interesting baked items brought to the potluck party tonight. I hadn’t seen this type if cookie before and thought if interesting and very easy to make.

This is a portion of a larger illustration of a corporate Christmas card I inked tonight. It’s all part of a Christmas scene of the grandfather telling a story to his grandson. My next step is to set type and then color using Photoshop.

Got a chance to drop off a few special Christmas cards off today to a few friends near Tampa.

Met with, long time friend, John Stevens and we had a philosophical discussion about invisible forces. That led me to sketching the above on the back of his card! 🙂

Had a very busy days touring Naples and areas north to Fort Myers, Florida. So I slipped this in at the end of a tiring day. It’s Swampy and Trilby for a puzzle page for one of the Swampy books.

There will likely be a lit from at least a couple Swampy books in the Daily Inks set this week as I work real hard to catch up from how embarrassing behind I am involving two of the books. It’s a lot if odds and ends, but I have to wrap them up this week.

Here’s a caricature I drew at an event in Nsples, Florida, tonight. The fellow likes action movies and science fiction, so my comic book training fell into gear here. There was also a bit of down time during the event where I was supposed to hold off drawing. Of course, that didn’t work too well and got a chance to add a bit more to this drawing.

Penciled and inked the next Swampy’s Florida cartoon while in a hotel room in Naples, Florida, tonight. I’m trying to get as much artwork as I can before a hectic day tomorrow. Part of Saturday includes a wedding event I’ll be drawing caricatures at. Guess that tells you what the DailyInks will be tomorrow.

I spent part of Thanksgiving sharing the festive time with friends. My friend Nancy Stewart invited me to the family festive gathering.

Amongst those there was former Orlando City Commissioner Mable Butler. The event was at Mable’s daughter’s home. While I worked at Orlando City Hall I did a number of projects with Mable. Because she collects frogs, a few projects incorporate frogs.

I hadn’t seen Mable in person for over ten years. So I whipped up the Thanksgiving frog watercolor artwork and passed it on to her. Above is a photo of Mable, the artwork and me.

I also got to visit with Nancy’s son, David. We both are involved in the cartooning business and are dealing with the difficulties of the current business. We talked a bunch about comics, the art business and the digital world.

This is the inked and watercolored art for a friend who is a big fan of frogs. Since I’m visiting tomorrow during Thanksgiving, I’ve combined the two.

Here’s a small sampling of my Christmas card this year. I’ll reveal more over the next few days.

Last evening I got the chance to visit my dear 105 3/4 year old friend, Lucile Fair. She is doing mighty good! Now pretty much set in a wheel chair for getting around purposes. She’s still all bright and sunny and a memory to beat all. I’d entirely forgotten something I promised her almost a year ago! I’ll take care of that soon and post that here, too!