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.

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.

Here’s a bit of step by step of a painting I’m working on for 2012 Pine Castle Pioneer Days festival. Here is the prepped for painting step …

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.

On the evening of September 23rd, I was scheduled to help the Herman Cain campaign in a room in the Rosen Centre hotel by donating time and drawing caricatures at that evening’s meet and greet with Cain. As I approached the room there was already a long line of people waiting nearly an hour before the event started. As the time for the event approached there were 4 of us in the room: me, a fellow with NBC chronicling Cain’s campaign, the Florida ground coordinator and the state head of his campaign and the crowd outside the room got larger and larger. When I arrived there were about 75 waiting. Soon there were 150… 300…500.. The problem was the room was only to hold 125. Apparently Cain’s handling of the Republican debate the night before and a speech to the gathered delegates earlier in the day drew in an unexpected response.

Now the really big problem. The hotel was full of meet and greets. There were no new rooms available. Others were full of other meetings or meetings that were constructed for other events. It appeared there was no where to go. This was a problem for the hotel also. They couldn’t turn the crowd away and they couldn’t have, what was by this time for the scheduled start of the event, around 1000 people coming into a room for 125. They pulled epole from everywhere to clear an assembled room for a large gathering next morning.

The new location was just across the hall. The trouble was that there were around a thousand people in between outside. So we headed for the service corridor in the back of the room and started running the length of the service hallways to the new room. I was hauling my easel with lights attached and the NBC guy had his camera over his shoulder.  We got in the room as a fit team was hauling hundreds of chairs and tables and podiums out of the very large room as fast as they could.

Quickly the room was cleared and an area was set up for Cain with a podium and a roping to keep folks a distance away. The meet and greet concept had to be set aside. There was no way to meet and greet a thousand people during a two hour period. Above is a photo of the final room with the NBC guy, coordinators, Cain’s communications director and hotel staff – The calm before the storm.

Soon the doors opened and the crowd, who at different points had been collectively singing outside the doors, streamed in and filled the room. Being in a corner on the opposite side of where Cain spoke, I really had trouble hearing him through the thick crowd. I was also busy drawing as many people as I could during a short period of time. Below are photos of a few that I drew.

I attended Presidency 5 on September 22nd and 23rd at and near the Orange County Convention Center. The gathering is of Republicans from all 67 counties in Florida, along with delegates who participate in a straw ballot to determine who the state is supporting for the presidency on the G.O.P. side.

I found myself wearing many hats during my time there which was okey dokey with me. Manning the information booth at the Rosen Plaza for a few hours for the Florida Federated Republican Women, of which I am an associate member, had me making use of my extensive knowledge of the area. On the 23rd I went onto the main concourse of the Orange County Convention Center and helped out in the Herman Cain campaign booth folding t-shirts and making tickets for an event the night of the 23rd, which I’ll detail further in Part 2.

The sketches above are from day 1, the 22nd. Below is a view of the concourse at the convention center from one point in both directions. This is at the end of the day and we were closing down. The night before this area was filled with people waiting to get into the Presidential debate.

For a short while I drew caricatures for the Florida Federated Republican Women. This is George Mann, who is a multi-generation Florida native whose family has been in the cattle business for over a century in Florida. He also is a Cracker storyteller.

On the left is Ann Archer (with her daughter Pam Archer) who is the longest serving on the Florida Executive Committee. At this point over 60 years. She was at one time in Dade County. On the right is the first black woman to serve on the Dade County Republican Executive Committee. I introduced these two and they shared stories of their times in Dade County.