Above is the prepped version  in the process getting the watercolor painting below finished. Above I’ve penciled the caricature incorporating the image of the person’s head and a large amount of information about her to assemble a really personal drawing of who she is.
Adding the ink that won’t run with the watercolor, I prep the art and then add the watercolor.
This artwork was done from start to finish with the client at Beefy king in Orlando, Florida

Here’s the final inked art from the pencils seen below. You can see I altered a few things here and there I went from pencils to inks. The client also made a few requests involving the lady in the illustration. This is a private commission.

Here is the pencil rough for an illustration I’m developing for a client. I’ll try to show the progress of the art was I work on it.

Here’s a large group of University of North Florida students with little stuffed Swampy of Swampy’s Florida. I was there to entertain with caricatures and I’ll post later about those.

Here’s the newest Swampy’s Florida print- ‘Sea Turtle Christmas Surprise’.

Here are the pencils and preparatory art for the watercolor I’m about to add to this artwork. It is a photograph and not a scan of the work. Didn’t have a scanner with me.

This is for a set of Christmas cards and prints available soon. The setting is Key Biscayne, Florida. That’s the Biscayne lighthouse in the background. The size is 11″ x 14″.

I’ll post the finished watercolor version soon.

Sea Change by Robert B. Parker

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Reading as part of my Florida collection:

Robert Parker dovetails his typical Massachusetts setting for his Jesse Stone character with locations in Southeast Florida involving a crime involving yachts, wild kids and sex. Not that it had to be Florida. He could just as well had the alternate location in Virginia or New Jersey. To do that, though, more narrative would’ve been required. So, Parker takes the easy route and assumes the reader is carrying a stacked knowledge of Florida stereotypes. Big house, rich and arrogant people, beach bars are about as detailed as Parker gets in this book involving Florida.

What I found odd was the lack of narrative in describing scenes in Massachusetts, too. In fact, this book is nearly fifty percent dialogue. The writing of that is Ok, but it’s difficult to often know much of anything involving the surroundings. Seems to me a deadline to get the book in to the publisher got too close and Parker slung this out. The format I picked up this book in was the taller $9.99 version. A ton of kerning happened to stretch this book to fit it and is further indication that Parker may have quickly written this to meet a deadline.

My usual complaint of fluffing a contemporary book up is certainly the case here. This time, though, it’s the dialogue that needed severe trimming. There’s a side story involving Stone’s relationship with is ex-wife that doesn’t fit well.

overall this book does have Florida locations, but are not well written and locations are very general. The overall book seems to me to be a whole lot of dialogue looking for a good story.

View all my reviews

I attended a Silver Springs park update on Wednesday and learned more about the merging of the iconic Florida attraction, Silver Springs, into the state park system. The grand reopening will be October 1st and the park’s whole name will be Silver River State Park. The cost to get into the two merged sites: $8. Wild Waters will still be a separate area from the overall park. Drainage is changing significantly and that might be most noticeable in the massive changes in the parking lot. By the way, parking returns to the early days of Silver Springs by being free.

Swampy’s Florida cartoon artwork by Rob Smith, Jr.

This is cartoon artwork for the upcoming ‘Swampy’s Florida: Dunnellon’ coming out next month. Watch for more coming in the next few weeks!

Thought I would share this camel on, what many weekly workers call, “Hump Day”.
Drew this last week for educational materials for my friends at “The Knowledge Exchange”, an educational store in Palm Bay, Florida, near Melbourne.

The art is drawn on vellum bristol and inked using a series of felt tip and brush pens.
Below is video at YouTube of me inking the artwork.:

Drew caricatures tonight for a corporate event at the Peabody hotel south of Orlando in Orange County. The event’s attendees were all involved with containing digital information or servicing those who do.