Got together with friends this evening at Stardust Video & Coffee. It was great fellowship with Neal Davies, Robert Baurle, Rich Scott and Cindy Mackey. Lots of drawing, talking about cookies, world events and Florida memories.

Before we gathered, I got a bunch of cartooning and illustration artwork done. Will post a composite soon.

You Bet Your Life by Stuart M. Kaminsky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A real fun book of the constantly depressed Toby Peters out to calm the anger of mob guys after Chico Marx, of the Marx Brothers. Much like the rest of the series, Toby encounters others known of the era of the ’40s.

Pretty well written, as always. However, there are a few loose ends that, I believe, may have been part of an effort to throw the reader as to who-done-it. Though, to me, it was pretty obvious from near the beginning. This was the first of the Toby Peters series I have read where the bad individual was figured out fast.

The depictions of the Marx brothers, of which I am a solid fan, is quite off from what they were off screen. Harpo was known to have, and I have heard it myself, a deep New York accented voice and Groucho was known to be far more subdued in regular life. Chico’s depiction by Kaminsky is what I have read it was.

This book also shows Kaminsky’s adept ability to write about Chicago and not Florida, at the time. Chicago is written in such depth, while only a glancing blow is made of an opening scene in Florida. This changes dramatically when Kaminsky writes his Lew Fonesca series based in Sarasota, Florida.

Overall, I recommend the book.

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Here are caricatures drawn today during an event in Moss Park in south Orange County, Florida.

Here’s a cartoon illustration for an upcoming Swampy’s Florida book for Marion County, Florida. The ‘Swampy’s Florida: Marion County Museum of History’ coloring book is an A to Z count of items in the museum in coloring book form to help educate young people about the history of Marion County. I’ll post more images as they I get them drawn.

Another meeting. Another batch of artwork done! Needed to riddle a stack of pencils for projects and did a bunch during a two and a half hour meeting…Participated in the meeting, too! Even got to ink a bit. Next is to send off the pencil work to a slew of clients for OKs, then I can figure time to ink some and color some. Some of these i can show final versions of later.

Made one of my twice-a-year trips to my friend George Pieper’s cartooning class to be a guest speaker. I demonstrated drawing the various presidents we’ve had since Carter and a bunch about my Swampy’s Florida project. As always, I ended the talk with a drawing made from suggestions of the students. Above is George and myself and the drawing drawn from suggestions.

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.

Still navigating through sickness. Much better than last week. One way I could tell is by the most recent caricatures I drew at recent events. Above is last Saturday. Below is the Wednesday a week before, where i felt just rotten. I was not up to par on that Wednesday.

The toughest part drawing with a nasty fever was trying to get my brain to grasp proportion and depth. I couldn’t get my head to agree with my hands. I also knocked out a quick set of illustrations during this time and the result was lousy as I couldn’t get the foreground to work with the background. Now feeling better I didn’t have that problem this past weekend.

The next two are also from Saturday near Lake Mary.

The next three are from this past Sunday in Sarasota.

This fellow was great to talk to. He’s 90 and spent World War II in the western Pacific as a signal corp man for the Army. He told me he wished people today showed the courage and commitment that they did back then. I feel the same way and included it in the drawing and asked others in the family to make copies of it to spread around to the youngsters so that they might get his important message, too.

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!