Thought I would share this illustration I did to celebrate Easter for the Swampy’s Florida website.
As Easter winds down, Swampy and Zuber have devoured enough chocolate. Trilby, on the other hand is running out and may need to dip into reserves.

The Secret Soldier by Alex Berenson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m against the tide of the majority of reviews praising this volume of John Wells fictitious life. Maybe it’s timing that affected my experience reading the book. I also wonder if it’s that I accidently bypassed the volume before this, The Midnight House, that has gotten poor reviews. Whatever the case, I found this book far over written. It’s great when an author has a lot of background for a novel, but that author doesn’t have to put it all in one volume. To me, the book dragged horribly with the excess. This is a complaint I have with the majority of contemporary writers I’ve read. I just hadn’t experienced so much coming from Berenson. A good dose of studying Agatha Christie might help. But, I have a feeling the publisher needs to build a $9.99 book and wants the overdone writing.

I happen to be reading a Frank Slaughter novel at the same time which has plenty of excess. But it’s so beautifully written and so cogent to the storyline, that it works so very well. Being a better writer would’ve greatly helped Berenson’s extra loads in this. Slaughter is so good that I’m very slowly taking in each line and paragraph. At this rate, I could take a year reading Slaughter’s book and find it time well invested. I found myself wanting to read through The ‘Secret Soldier’ faster just to get it out of the way. It was pretty obvious how the book was going to end and, sad to write, there were no twists to make the reading journey interesting or fun.
There is a very good story intertwined in so much else. I wish the book was better assembled to make it enjoyable. There are also some other specifics in the story that bother me, like use of a cell phone, navigating a boat in a certain area, an oddly handled partner for Wells. Seems if a writer is going to over write, maybe fix some other sloppy writing first.

One other thing. There is an odd similarity to the basis of this book that is similar to an episode of ‘The Rockford Files’ where even a couple character names are the same. As an editorial cartoonist, I certainly know how duplication exists when creating a story. It just happens. Just found the similarity interesting and thought I’d mention it.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book.

View all my reviews

This is the third of the Swampy’s Florida Easter card images.

This was penciled and inked on paper. Then scanned. Colored using Photoshop. I did the artwork about a month ago.

I’ll post a link to where you can purchase them when ready.

Made my bi-annual stop at my friend’s George Pieper’s cartooning class to give a talk to his class about cartooning and caricature. Each time I take answers to a series of questions I give to the students and combine them into a drawing. Above is me and George and the drawing i drew based on the responses.

Soon three new Swampy’s #Florida Easter cards will be available! Above is one of the images I did of the cards. I’ll post a link when available so you can purchase some! – http://swampysflorida.com/?p=9837

Been doing the caricature thing for a corporate event in Jacksonville, Florida, over the last two days.

Here is one of two images available soon as Swampy’s Florida Easter cards! The cards will be available above in the Swampy store at the top of the website being handled by The Knowledge Exchange. The cards would also be available at Julianne’s Coastal Cottage in Mount Dora. I’ll be posting the other Easter card art later this week.

Here’ s a bit of art that will be in the upcoming ‘Swampy’s Florida: Silver Springs’ I’m working on! Putting the book together now and hope for it to be avaialble in about three weeks.

Today’s Sketch Dailies involves the pop punk rock cartoon character Jem. I considered where Jem would be today and see her in a bar in Hoboken singing, as she can, the great American songbook….but still in her punk garb. Kinda as the fate of the singer in Copacabana.

Below are a few images of Jem in her prime:

Saw the subject for a daily artistic challenge is the celebrity, Mr. T. A couple months ago i was thinking I wish i had a reason to draw Mr. T. Here it is!

I took the angle of Mr. T’s roll as B.A. Baracus in the television series The A-Team. In the series, B.A. hates anything to do with flying. Thus, he flies!