I was part of an Hospice of Marion County fundraiser held at The Ivy House in Ocala, Florida. It was a terrific event with everyone decked out in their vintage best for this first annual Vintage Gala. I met some really great people who have done some extraordinary things for others. Amy, below, has been counseling children for fourteen years. The average time people help young people with severe difficulties is just a few years. Most I’ve met that run beyond the few years tend to be cold and a bit distant. Amy has an amazing attitude considering her length of service with Hospice.

Judy’s husband hunts the deer and hog and she cooks ’em Southern style!

Below is Mimi, who owns the location of the event, The Ivy House. The Ivy House in Ocala is the second location. the first location is further west in Williston, Florida. Both are situated in historic homes and both are known for their outstanding Southern fare. I had the chance to speak to Mimi after the event about her restaurant, it’s 61 year history, their cookbook and many other things!

I attended the first meeting of the new Central Florida Expressway board meeting this morning. The organization previously had been racked by scandal and accusations. This new board for the toll roads in Central Florida will hold sway of toll roads and soon-to-be-toll roads in four counties- Orange, Seminole, Lake and Osceola. Members of the board acknowledged to previous problems and sought not to repeat them.

It was a standing room only room. Seemed it was mostly filled with road builders and contractors. The fellow who oversees construction of the organizations roads was kind enough to get me a chair, after standing for a good part of the meeting. Once seated, i pulled out the sketchbook and doodled the above and another page of sketches.

Here’s the third in the Happy Birthday card series for Swampy’s Florida. there’s more to come with images to include a flamingo and mermaid.

Worked on a bunch of very different projects today. Here’s one of the Swampy’s Florida new set of birthday cards coming soon!

This is the atart of a new project from a client that didn’t know I know how to draw alligators. Apparently the end client is being very specific about the guitar. So, i expect this artwork to change before I get to the color part.

Hickory Dickory Death by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

‘Hickory Dickory Death’ is a nice mystery with a slew of suspects, but a suspect plot. Hercule Poirot rather stumbles into what seems to be a mere issue of theft until turning into murder. His involvement seems a bit of a stretch to begin with, but as the story goes the narrative seems less Poirot and more the authorities as if Poirot seemed more interested in the theft than the deaths.

There area long string of suspects that Christie does her best to discern, but still seems a bit too similar and that confused me while reading. In today’s radicalism view of political correctness, it’s likely younger folks will needlessly cringe at Christie’s attempt to distinguish her characters. It is not one world. We are not one people. Unfortunately, Christie doesn’t do enough to kick up a notch the differences.

Something else Christie doesn’t expound enough about is the basis of the solution to the mystery. There’s a lot to it and could have been far better defined involving dangers which leads to murder.

The writing is good as Chrisite is, but she sets too much up with the assumption that all know Poirot. The rest of the plot becomes far too convoluted due to what i commented about above. There’s a very good plot here and the underlying mystery has been done many times. Just done far better than Christie has done. Though, in that this is from 1955, Christie is early in handling subject matter far more common today.

Christie is a legend and i hate to write this involving legends, but…
Bottom line: i don’t recommend this book.

View all my reviews

Really the title should be – “A Few Days Ago on the Drawing Board”. Working waaaay to late Tuesday night had me miss the Orlando Remembered, a board I serve on, meeting at the Orange County Regional History Center early Wednesday morning. Sara Van Arsdel, curator of the museum for the past twenty eight years is retiring. I remember her taking the position so many years ago as, Orlando native, Jean Yothers stepped down after ten years in the position. Hard to imagine so much time has passed!!! I sure admit I have not been a fan of certain activities at the museum. I have been a cheerleader of the unbelievable job Sara did of keeping the history museum in the 1920’s former Orange County Courthouse. A tough task, especially when Orange County was seeking office space for an expanding government in years past. It took her having exhibits that I hated to keep the museum in the courthouse alive. Kudos to Sara for that and for being in charge of the museum for 28 years!

This painting was done last week and passed on to long time dear friend Grace Chewning on Sunday, thanks to help from my father. Grace carted the card for folks to sign and the photo above was taken.

Penciled and inked quite a bit today. Here’s one of the pieces – a dancing gator for Swampy’s Florida. This is set to be one of the prints that will be of a single character. Also it’s planned to be used for one of the greeting cards. Now it needs to be prepped for digital color.

Here’s the color version of the airboat art. This is to be used on tishirts involving this musician. I’ll let you all know how to get a t-shirt here, when it’s available, if you all would like.

Here’s the inked version of the pencils posted earlier this week. Approved and ready for color, which I’ll get to next week.

Here’s are the pencils for a proposed t-shirt design for a musician. It goes in for approval and let’s see what happens. If i can, I’ll try to post the final art as it comes along.

I ordinarily would include the background, but in this is for a t-shirt, simplicity is important. It might still be added. I do get into other details from chickens to fish. I’m likely to really tone those down quite a bit when inked.