I joined the Thursday morning hiking group of the Florida Cracker Chapter of the Florida Trail Association for, what turned out to be, a strenuous 6 mile hike through San Felasco State Park. There are many more photos at the Swampy’s Florida site. You can see those by clicking here.

Along the way I got some sketchin’ done, too. Not as much as usual. Below are a couple of the slight scribblings I made along the way.

While hiking it’s always good to be prepared for emergencies by carrying a well stocked Pez container!

We found ourselves in an empty bed of a cypress swamp.

This should be under at least some water. Below is a lonely cypress knee.

Did this illustration of a fishing alligator catching a bass between Friday, December 2nd, and Saturday, December 3rd. Began the illustration at the First Friday event in Downtown Lakeland in front of The General Store. Finished it while at the Pioneer Florida Museum and Village in Dade City the next day. I wasn’t sure what I was going to illustrate at first and then my author friend, Bob Bass, stopped by with his new book about fishing bass and I knew what to draw.

I first sketched out the drawing in pencil on watercolor paper. Then i went over that with ballpoint pen.

Next I added the watercolor. As I painted i was thinking I wish I had slid the gator a bit farther back. The two do look a bit too close.

Finally, I went over the illustration with a dark grey Pitt brush marker. Now it goes off to the printer to make prints of.

Here’s a page depicting discussions our Socrates Cafe group had at Chelsea Coffee Company on Tuesday.

Above is the prepped version of the illustration for watercolor. This is an illustration for the Pine Castle Pioneer Days. It’ll be used for the poster, sign and other collateral materials.

This is the watercolored version.

Here is the finished version.

It was park day last Sunday, October 2nd. It was also the 121st birthday of Groucho Marx. A trip to Homeland Heritage Park and Mosaic Peace River Park was in store. Had a great time with Terisa Glover and Sparky as we traversed the area of Homeland, Florida. More photos of the trip will show up at Swampy’s Florida.

It was from the boardwalk at Peace River Park that I drew the sketch above. Below is video of part of the sketch.

Above is a photo of the natural wonder you can take in at Peace River Park.

Here’s a church, which is part of the Homeland Heritage Park.

I later ran over to the week old opened Marshall Hampton Reserve near Lake Hancock in Lakeland. There’s a photo of that soon to appear on the Swampy’s Florida site. My non-Swampy photos didn’t turn out well. Very wild there. Posted as open to foot and equine travelers and apparently to bikers, who nearly ran me down.

Was doing the live drawing again using Justin TV and in 3 hours got a ton done! below shows the lot drawn which includes Tuesday’s editorial cartoon, Tuesday’s Swampy’s Florida, a bunch of book illustrations for a client, a character sheet for another client, a drawing of Ronald Reagan for a Justin TV viewer, etc. The Sketch O’ Week is also in the mix and shown above. Contributing subjects were Joe Read, “Monkey” , and TDebondt, “Fire & Baseball”. That was a tough one, but I did draw it right on the spot after the subjects were provided.

While attending a Socrates Cafe, I doodled a page from the topics that came along.

During the Justin TV broadcast asked for two contributions from those listening. “Artform” provided ‘tripping on a shoelace’ and “Filler1008″ wrote ‘Chef”. I took it from there and the artwork is above.

During a live stream on Justin TV yesterday I thought I’d try another of the sketches many fellow artists did in March. Two watching contributed: “Coldchain” offered Swimming and “Rtb243002” added Lion. So I drew the drawing above.

Sketchin’ during a Marion County Historical Commission meeting on July 11th.

Been attending meetings in the past couple weeks. Here are sketches form Orlando Remembered (above), an executive Republican meeting (image 2) and the Marion County Springs Festival meeting (bottom).