Here’s a flock of artwork done at Chelsea Coffee this evening. Three caricatures, a Swampy cartoon and roughs for some proposed Swampy clothing.

De Soto Didn’t Land At Tampa by Rolfe F. Schell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

‘De Soto Didn’t Land in Tampa’ is a hard book to review without balancing it with other accounts as to just where others think Hernando landed. Author Schell does an outstanding job making his point in under a hundred pages and it would seem he is correct. Punta Gorda sure feels he is with all their recognition of Hernando.

I’ll press on with my reading and have a few texts that have alternate ideas. I might come back and change my rating of the book and this review.

I’m giving this such a high rating because of how thorough Schell has accomplished his goal. The comparative chart of separate diaries of the explorers is very impressive. Schell’s knowledge of Spanish and his translation, further adds to his credibility.

I’m very familiar with the territory of the state that Schell lays out in his narrative as Hernando’s trail. Most all makes sense with the exception of the location of Ocali. Though, I think we may have spent too much time trying to interpret something that is not interpretable. We know names changed over the years and even Schell points out the trouble of multiple names for a single location.

Nevertheless, Schell’s effort in this book is impressive and I recommend it for those who wish to chase this ghost of a mystery.

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Made one of my twice-a-year trips to my friend George Pieper’s cartooning class to be a guest speaker. I demonstrated drawing the various presidents we’ve had since Carter and a bunch about my Swampy’s Florida project. As always, I ended the talk with a drawing made from suggestions of the students. Above is George and myself and the drawing drawn from suggestions.

This watercolor painting I finished last night will be in the silent auction at the Marion County Springs Festival tomorrow, Saturday the 24th, at Rainbow Springs State Park. The educational and music filled event runs from 10am to 4pm. Come on out and maybe you can nab this for 20 bucks!

Spent the day filming a couple of videos at The Knowledge Exchange in Palm Bay,

The first was for a DVD currently being titled ‘Drawing for 8 and Under’. The photo below shows the drawing on the dry erase board that ends the video.

The second recorded is currently named ‘How-to-Cartoon for 8 and Over’. Above is the photo that wrapped that session. It’s a culmination of answers to questions I posed. The bear looking creature is supposed to be a koala bear, but I didn’t have a photo to work from. All to show the importance of reference.

Got the prep work done a couple days ago. Added watercolor while painting live during the Art Walk in Mt Dora at Julianne’s Coastal Cottage. I still need to work on details in the illustrations to get it to pop out more.

Penciled this during a meeting tonight as I prep for a series of watercolor paintings I need to get done. It’s part of a Swampy’s Florida series that will soon be available to interior designers through a Miami company. There will be two series. One much like this of Florida locations and Florida critters. The other series is of beach scenes around the state.

This is just the pencils of the artwork. Next I prep the art to be watercolored. I’ll be painting the art  this Friday during the Art Walk in Downtown Mt. Dora, Florida, at Julianne’s Coastal Cottage store. I’ll be doing it live. If you’re in the area, please come by and say ‘Hello!’.

I did the penciling during a meeting of the Springs Alliance which I’m involved with. Certainly an appropriate time to be working on artwork about the Rainbow River.

This is from a photo taken by a friend of a half fallen cypress tree on the Rainbow River in Marion County, Florida

Here’s Swampy, Rob and Marcia Gaedcke, President of the Titusville Area Chamber of Commerce with a page of art for the upcoming ‘Swampy’s Florida: Titusville’.

Here’s a piece of artwork I’m drawing of the upcoming ‘Swampy’s Florida: Lake Wales’.

On July 28th I introduced the new Florida History text book at The Knowledge Exchange. I conducted to talks. One about cartooning and the other about Florida history. Above are some from the Florida history class.

During the cartooning class I got the attendees to contribute various ideas and we all came up with this scene.

Here’s a close up of the artwork.

Been going for a few days without much rest to get a project done. Here’s a few illustrations I drew for it.