Terisa Glover and I had a blast in Tarpon Springs Sunday while doing research for an upcoming Swampy’s Florida coloring book. Above and below are a couple sketches done during the trip. Unfortunately, a trip to Ozona, Florida found that one of my favorite Bar-B-Q places, the Ozona Pig, was closed for the day. Sooooo, it’s a trip across the street to Molly Goodheads for fish food. Because of that the drawings ensued.

Earlier in the day we teed off in Tarpon Springs and was welcomed by the sign below. I figured it meant ‘Beware of Hurricane Ahead’.

It’s fried shrimp time at Hella’s Restaurant! Wanna see what Swampy had? Check out Swampy’s Florida Sunday.

Penny for your thoughts? Getting a scrunched official Tarpon Springs penny.

For those who know the story, Sunday, the 5th, is also Taylor’s 19th birthday. I had my annual banana split at a restaurant in downtown Tarpon Springs in honor of his birthday. These folks don’t usually make banana splits, but did an excellent job!

Been promising a Dean Martin drawing to my friend Cathryn Grayson and was able to get it in today. The 7th would’ve been Dean’s 94th birthday. I’m a huuuuuge fan and hope one day to get to the annual Dean Martin Festival in Dean’s hometown of Steubenville, Ohio.

Saturday was ‘Take a Hike, Florida’ day! I joined in at the Grand Opening of the Charles Bronson State Forest in east Orange County near Christmas, Florida. There was a great turnout for the hike and the trail is EXCELLENT! It was great to run into a number of Florida Trail Association friends. As I hiked, I sketched. Above is one where I kept walking and sketching.

Here are some photos!:

While on UStream today had a number of visitors and we got talking about music. I made some mention of attendee Terisa Glover’s dog, Sparky, providing banjo music at her store and the sketch above came to mind.

This came to mind also after learning that Cedric Hohnstadt is showing various drawings from his ‘Dueling Pigs’ site. I contributed one back in October.

Here’s my Sketch-A-Day: March for today. Elements supplied by Andrea Schell! Thanks, Andrea!

Here’s the recording of this sketch:

I started talking about MArty Allen’s 89th birthday today when I realized folks wouldn’t know what I was talking about, so I did a quick sketch of him off the top of my head.
Here it is:

I introduced friend & fellow cartoonist, George Pieper to Florida great outdoors at the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway Landbridge trail section of the Florida Trail. Above and below are sketches down there.

Here’s a color caricature I did of these two lovely ladies today. Met them at Beefy King in Orlando and drew and painted the whole thing there.

Some drawings from this past weekend….

I took advantage of free entry into Florida State Parks Saturday and got to eight parks… and sketched away. I also got a lot of Swampy photos some of which can be found over at Swampy’s Florida.

To the right is a sketch I drew at Crystal River Archaeological State Park.

Next are fish lingering over the spring boils at Rainbow Springs State Park.

The turtles are from Homosassa Springs State Park.

I ran across ‘The Monkees Go Mod’ while perusing a bookstore and I thought I’d share a couple pages of cartoon artwork from the 1967 book. Both are drawn by Dick Hodgins, Jr. If the style has a Dennis the Menace type look, that’s because Hodgins was an assistant to Hank Ketcham drawing Ketcham’s strip ‘Half Hitch’ and helping with the Dennis strip.

Hodgins’ dad was also a cartoonist. For years he was staff cartoonist for The Orlando Sentinel in Orlando, Florida. While at the Sentinel he drew a history of Orlando comic strip and a ton of other art. Later Hodgins, Sr. joined his friend Jim Ivey at Jim’s ‘The Cartoon Museum’ to teach cartooning classes. I was one of the lucky ones to take one of those classes. I’ll have to post some Hodgins, Sr. art sometime.