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!

Swampy’s Florida Prints – Picnic at Biscayne Bay.

Here’s the last of the nine watercolor paintings of Biscayne Bay beach set. This was the last one I needed to finish and I only found time today to do it. This wraps up the set and will show all nine when they are set for the gallery catalog they are going in.

Have been drawing at quite a few events in the past week including one fro Gasparilla. Here are some photos of folks with their drawings. The one above involves hiking in space and the one just below was great fun. It involved drawing a scene from ‘Wuthering Heights’. Then it’s a former engineer mapping out plans for travel and lastly a native Tampan bicycling the historic buildings in Ybor City.

Doing the caricature thing in St. Petersburg last night!

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

Last caricature gig of the year and drew a terrific assortment of attendees. Most in the event business themselves.

Here is a step by step of a watercolor caricature I painted on Halloween.Above is the pencil and preparation for watercolor.

Here I’ve added the watercolor.

Finally, I brush in the line work.

‘Funny Folks Behind the Serious Business of Cartoons’ is the name of a fun panel of Florida cartoonists and author Tim Hollis this Saturday at the Orange County Regional History Center.

Tim Hollis starts off the event at 12:30 with a talk about the history of cartooning and tourism. He will also be introducing his new book, ‘Part of a Good Breakfast’ about cereal premiums for the Baby Boomer set. Tim will be available to sign books after his talk.

The cartoonist panel starts at 1pm with cartoonists Bruce Beattie, Allen Bellman, Mike Osbun, Jeff Parker, Mark Simon, and me. Each will talk about the cartoon work they do.  Then the floor will open to questions from the audience.

Afterward be sure to take a stroll trough the Peanuts exhibit of comic strips reflecting outdoor issues.

I organized the cartoonist panel and dove tailed it with our annual Florida Chapter meeting of the National Cartoonists Society, which I am also Florida Chapter Chairman of. I’m also involved with the History Center.

Here are a few caricatures I drew near Sarasota on September 6th. Started off outside.

It soon got dark….

So we all came inside.

This is one of the last I drew after more than 4 hours non-stop.  I was pooped!

This is a painting of Manley Fuller who is president of the Florida Wildlife Federation. I painted five of these for those who spoke at a water and springs awareness event back on June 23rd at Silver River State Park. I’m involved with a great group of folks called the Silver Springs Alliance that sponsored the event.

Charles Lee is the director of Advocacy at Audubon of Florida and came to speak at our event at Silver River State Park June 23rd. He spoke about how water is used. About 50% of our water resources in Florida are used to water grass.  As Charles points out, grass is just for decoration and yet swallows up so much of our water. Something to add is that the decorative grass is also responsible for the poisons of fertilizer and bug killer being added to the soil that filters it’s way into our Florida water supply. His talk is below and was recorded by Live Oak Production Group.

This is another in a series of five watercolor paintings of speakers from a conference I was involved with this past June 23rd.