More Romer, the Recycling Squirrel I scrawled out for our City Hallways more than 20 years ago while I was with the City of Orlando. This one is a favorite of mine. John Everhart was a co-worker who had one heck of a sense of humor. That last panel is an exact pose you might find him in if you came through the engineering department.

The cartoon involved a bit of editorial that employees were told one day that we no longer had a place to park and had to park blocks away and walk to City Hall. I didn’t mind the walk. It’s that the City was slowly giving away all the land around the building to business investors. I remember so well after the old City Hall was visually imploded at the beginning of the film Lethal Weapon 3, Lew Oliver arranged the new City Hall to have property around the building that might be built and then leased to help City taxpayers. Within ten years Lew was gone and the opposite happened.

This is Day 4 of a 5 day challenge that I got flipped in my head. That and I’ve been busy. This is #1 0f 3 for the day. Heck, I almost need a legal description to work this thing out!

I’m apparently supposed to ask another artist to post 3 bits of artwork for 5 days and also ask another artist to post work. OK, AE Sabo​ – You’ll likely follow the rules better than I. 😀

Savage Territory by William W. Johnstone

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m reading these in order and this is the fourth in the series. After a bumpy third book, this one gets more on track of the first two with similar quality and story telling. This is not as good as the first two, but still, involving story telling better than most all of the rest of the Johnstone Clan written books.

Seems this is the same writer as the other three books, for, again, there is an interest in trains, a Perry Mason-type trial and attention to detail missing in most Johnstone books. The writing is very good. The characters well written, as usual.

This is the first of the four where the outcome is pretty obvious from the start. The writer keeps the reader guessing as to just how the obvious ending could possibly occur with so many characters going in so many different directions. It all works well.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 8 of 10.

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Purgatory by William W. Johnstone

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As I read the Johnstone Clan’s The Last Mountain Man series from the start to this third in the series it becomes very apparent that the crafter of the tales is a far better storyteller than those handling the other parts of the series I’ve read so far. These three are all complex with interwoven threads that bind to make a solid story.

However, this one is not as well written as the first two. Specifically the first few chapters that are a mish-mosh of trying to retell the two previous books and start telling this one. One reason for this may be that this book came out the same year as the last and the one previous to it came out only months earlier. Chug-a-lugging these books seems to have strained production values.

The bulk of the book is still good, lacking the depth of the first two. The characters are especially well explained. Excellent work is done with a secondary character that is law enforcement that, over the course of the book, realizes what is really going on.

Despite the poorly written first chapters –
Bottom line: I recommend this book 7 of 10

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Here’s something else I did while at the City of Orlando, though i did a bunch of this with my own time. It was for the puppet theater the City used to have at the City Community Centers.

Each of the characters shown was also a puppet. I remember going out to get photos for this.

This for Facebook Art Challenge #3 of 3. Pam Treadwell

My pal Pam Pam Treadwell wants me to post 3 pictures here I drew. Well, I’ve been hunkered down again in the past few hours reworking a Swampy project. Got 18 pages penciled and inked. So, here’s them and three close ups.

Matt Jensen: The Last Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I have found the first books in a Johnstone Clan series are dynamite and this is one, too. A thoroughly satisfying western with a great underlying story with typical protagonists, lots of action and a very good ending.

Before this I read a book by L’Amour. The difference between the two writers, to me, that L’Amour was a literary writer and the Johnstone Clan tell simpler stories with a knack to craft characters the readers can care about. I’ve found myself not caring much about L’Amour characters. The Johnstone characters I usually want to know more about which pulls me into more novels in the in numerous series.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 7 of 10.

(side note: I happened to find this book during my travels and started it the same day. that has almost never happened. Hundreds of books writing to be read and I prop open a novel the same day I buy it. This happens to be a first of a series I’ve wanted to start, I hadn’t ready a Johnstone this month and I just finished a book and needed to start one all got me to read this immediately.)

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Here’s one of the Valentine’s Day cards I produced today. This is for her skin diving husband who looks for sea life of the octopus variety when he isn’t otherwise collecting guns. Nothing worse to encounter undersea than a well armed octopus. Should have had him say, “You kids keep off my lawn!”

I spent a few hours this evening inking a stack of pages involving a number of projects. I’m back in a local coffee shop. Second time this week with major accomplishments as a result. Been reading books of favorite writers, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley & others of the Round Table and their need for a place to hole away and get work done. Realized I need to do the same again.

It’s been exactly a year since I stopped going to my old coffee shop haunt due to political reasons. Since then have bounced around at chain spots and other places. Seems I have found a new spot- or as pals Craig Zablo & John Beatty call my “office” – to hunker down and really get work done

Here’s Molly and Ainsley with Julie of Julianne’s Coastal Cottage and their hand painted cards!

After knocking out hand-made, watercolored Christmas ornaments this past Christmas, Julie Pointer,of Julianne’s Coastal Cottage in Mount Dora, brought up the idea of me creating similar Valentine’s Day cards. We set a date and that was this past weekend. It was supposed to be three hours on Friday and three hours on Saturday. Turned out to be Friday through Sunday and I turned out to be exhausted.

Love drawing trains and this one covers all the items this fellow mentioned. I didn’t get his name, but will tomorrow when he and his wife come back to have me paint a few more cards for them.

My main goal was to harken back to the days when we, as young folks, exchanged well illustrated Valentine’s Day cards with punny sayings.

Most of the overtime was catching up with requests. Some that even came through Facebook.

All were inked and watercolored while folks watched. I used a Koi portable watercolor set to add color.

The photos are all requests for the various names noted on the cards.

The First Quarry by Max Allan Collins

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

All these great reviews in Goodreads and I’m downgrading this novel. I found this book far below ‘The Last Quarry’. To me, the Quarry character did not seem the same to me.

I had real trouble swallowing this twenty something doing much that is written in this book. Collins writes this character too smooth, too willing to kill, too comfortable being holed up for days. Collins wrote this book as if this was Quarry’s first case, but Quarry came off, to me, as a seasoned professional. He seems to make no mistakes.

That includes with the women involved. The interaction of amateur Quarry and two women characters is the most unbelievable part and comes off amateurish for an author.

Quarry dispatches quite a number of people with no clever or fantastic scheme. Quarry just aims and fires. Hunh? The other characters are indicated as experienced. Are all of them, from various aspects of life, that slow and stupid? Of is this something worse involving writer Collins?

The author shirks off the never ending convenience of Quarry’s project as the setting being too small and everyone runs into each other. Sheesh! I might forgive this if the author hadn’t written scores of other stories.

I determined this book is a great example of an author’s lazy writing. The characters were otherwise pretty one sided. The setting poorly described. The time period is more than well noted, but only involving entertainment. As mentioned, Quarry came across as a different character than in ‘The Last Quarry’. All of the rest of the books I’ve read by Collins are head and shoulders better than this.

A likely reason why the writing of this book stood out so poorly to me is because I had just finished reading of Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Scott Fitzgerald, etc., and now also reading more Benchley. Collins writing is incomparable to any of them involving this book.

Bottom line: I do not recommend this book. 2 of 10.

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Here’s my latest watercolor painting of frogs and Florida history. This is a frog in the place of aviator Tony Jannus, who is regarded as the pilot of the first scheduled airline in the world. This occurred over Tampa Bay in 1914. The passenger was a former St Petersburg mayor who won an auction to be the first passenger for $400.