In the past week I’ve been illustrating the celebratory days of the week. For example Tuesday is ‘Work Like a Dog Day’. My art for that is on the upper left. Click here to learn what that is about.

Swing over to the Swampy’s Florida website and watch the rest of the artwork turn into color. Return each day so you can know what to celebrate each day on the Swampy’s Florida website or the Swampy’s Florida Facebook page.

Drew my Swampy, the Swamp Ape, as Batman for ‘Batman Day’. with him is Trilby, the baby alligator, as Robin.

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.

Another of the upcoming Swampy’s Florida birthday card series. this time with a turtle. Have another coming with an alligator soon. I’ll post when the cards will be available for purchase.

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.

This has been a busy week of caricature events! this one in Altamonte Springs, Florida. A medical office brought me in for an open house. The event went very well. I was concerned because i haven’t been sleeping much in the past few weeks and especially the past week. My likenesses could have been better, but the engagement with the crowd was the best at this event than others in the past few weeks. What really assisted that was the lack of blaring music/soccer games and other noise. It gave me a chance to interact with the crowd and working at getting the crowd to interact with themselves.

Also dropped off an illustration that got got bogged down in massive miscommunication and ended up getting kicked back to me. Haven’t had that happen in – well, I don’t know when. Quite jarring and surprising. Part of the problem, as I saw it, is that I thought the conversation between me and the client were also part of the instructions to get the artwork done.

Apparently, we should have gotten more familiar with each other. It also would have helped if I hadn’t been on the road so much and finding myself in various parts of the state with car problems so that I could have communicated with the client better and not worked on the art work off and on. I also struggled with the project as the request was to create the illustration with pencil. i thought that would be a breeze and approached it as I approach all my illustrations. However, this had a lot of mechanical parts in a rather boring setting and that i tried to enliven it a bit, which I work at in all my work. The client, it seems was looking for a very technical look which is positively not something I do.

Bottom line is that client wasn’t familiar with my work as I thought and if I had developed a contract between us, we might have better nailed down what was expected. In that I was doing the project for a relative of a friend of mine, a contract didn’t seem necessary. I do my best to avoid these traps. Though they come up at times, I have always done my best to salvage the project and can’t think of a time that a project crashed and burned. The client does want to regroup and reapproach the project, but I think we are too far apart in what I do and what they want, so I’m stepping away so that they can find an illustrator who can accomplish far better what they want. Lots of time and materials poured into the project. My loss, just at a time when i can’t afford to let that happen.

Possibly more caricatures Saturday. But that’s likely the last for a week or so. I have plenty else to do and will be featuring here in the coming week.

Spanish Bayonet by Stephen Vincent Benét
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very well told tale of Florida in the late 1700s. So much is historically accurate, as we know it. The writing is beyond superb. So much care is taken in describing scenes and people. There is a bit of over writing in certain parts, but they are well-written certain parts.

The best part of this book is that it is so very far from the formulaic style of today. My head started to carry the story forward with various typical, cliched outcomes of novels today, but this story has it’s own path to take. None of the Politically Correct entrapments and censors are around to get in Benet’s way to tell a terrific story.

I do wish the story wrapped up differently. It’s a bit short.

The story is about a landowner’s family that grows indigo, amongst other things, has a Minorcan harvesting crew and a guest that enters the scene from overseas and finds himself in more than he bargained for. All is set during British occupation of Florida on the heals of the American Revolution.

Interesting to note is that author Benet’s grandfather was a St. Augustine native of Minorcan decent. Would love to know more about that and if any of this story stems from family legend that might have become part of this book.

Bottom line: I 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.