October 16th, 2010 – Childrens book illustrator, and one time editorial cartoonist, Stacy Curtis has been posting “Dueling Banjo Pigs”.

Click here to see the art work on Stacy’s site. There is a ton of banjo picking pigs on the site! Be sure to see ’em all!

I’d wanted to add one to his collection strumming in the swamps of Florida. At the Festival of Cartoon Art in Columbus, Ohio, he mentioned folks might be doing their own renditions at the bar of the hotel Saturday evening. So I said, I’m in! That night at the bar I drew the above. Below is a photo of Stacy with the artwork. By the way, in the background is another friend, Frank Mariani.

I attended the Orlando Remembered meeting Wednesday morning. Above is a sketch of Peggy Jo van den Berg. Below is a sketch of member, and fellow artist, Ellen Smith.

Above is our Orlando Remembered Chairman, Robert Serros, and our permanent Secretary, Grace Chewning.

The above sketch was tough to do. It was really, really dark and starting to rain. The fellow forefront is Don Price who oversees the Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando. He actually was silhouetted, but I took some artistic license to do the drawing. 🙂

I used to work with Don when i was at Orlando City Hall years back. He started at Orlando City Hall a year after me in 1986 and is still there today. His attitude and enthusiasm presents youth compared to our closeness in age.  Showing how a sense of humor can make one young.

It was a great tour with a vast amount of Orlando history covered as the large group of 50 or so made our way from tombstone to tombstone as Don dug up Orlando’s, and sometimes America’s,  past. The entire group stayed together despite rain that started just as I wrapped the sketch above and continued for another two hours.

Swampy was there, too. More about that on Sunday at Swampy’s Florida.

Attended a gathering of a Socrates Cafe at Chelsea Coffee in Ocala. The group gets together and discusses issues of all sorts. Above is a sketch of part of the group.

Julia

Here are a couple sketches I did at the monthly Merry Philosophers meeting in Orlando. I used to attend this meeting 6 years ago and got away from it. Mostly because they met so far away from where I am. It so happened this meeting coincided with me needing to pick up my father at the airport, so I combined the two. My old friend Jim Saunders came along, too. Had to scoot out early to pick up my father whose plane ended up being delayed and I found myself waiting at a nearby Denny’s for the plane to land.

Jerry

I took advantage of free entry into Florida State Parks Saturday and got to eight parks… and sketched away. I also got a lot of Swampy photos some of which can be found over at Swampy’s Florida.

To the right is a sketch I drew at Crystal River Archaeological State Park.

Next are fish lingering over the spring boils at Rainbow Springs State Park.

The turtles are from Homosassa Springs State Park.

I made a pit stop at ABC Pizza for dinner last Wednesday night in Zypherhills. The sketch above is of part of the interior. The building was once a Biff Burger changed over twice to be an ABC Pizza. More Sunday on Swampy’s Florida!

A underground exploration as illustrated for the word ‘Subterranean’ for Illustration Friday.

Here’s my newest Genuine Florida painting that I made while filming on UStream. Prints are available and please contact me to get yours.

Click below to see the UStream video.

Click here to see me make the next one tomorrow, February 23rd.

The Illustration Friday word is clumsy. As I drew this live on UStream last night, two viewers, Coffeeness & HotPopcornWater, suggested the critters. I then cobbled together the drawing. You can see the film by clicking here. It’s the last ten minutes.

Sandra and I made our way through Palm Beach County to visit a few parks in the area. We started off at Serenoa Glade Park. The posey below is from there.

From there we visited Sugar Sand Park. The sketch to the right is of a very rare plant sprouting from a sabal palm. We also stopped at Blazing Star Preserve.

The film above was shot at Grassy Water Preserve. Below is the sketch I made.

On the way home we saw this was the weather we encountered.