More Romer, the Recycling Squirrel I scrawled out for our City Hallways more than 20 years ago while I was with the City of Orlando. This one is a favorite of mine. John Everhart was a co-worker who had one heck of a sense of humor. That last panel is an exact pose you might find him in if you came through the engineering department.

The cartoon involved a bit of editorial that employees were told one day that we no longer had a place to park and had to park blocks away and walk to City Hall. I didn’t mind the walk. It’s that the City was slowly giving away all the land around the building to business investors. I remember so well after the old City Hall was visually imploded at the beginning of the film Lethal Weapon 3, Lew Oliver arranged the new City Hall to have property around the building that might be built and then leased to help City taxpayers. Within ten years Lew was gone and the opposite happened.

This is Day 4 of a 5 day challenge that I got flipped in my head. That and I’ve been busy. This is #1 0f 3 for the day. Heck, I almost need a legal description to work this thing out!

I’m apparently supposed to ask another artist to post 3 bits of artwork for 5 days and also ask another artist to post work. OK, AE Sabo​ – You’ll likely follow the rules better than I. 😀

Here’s something else I did while at the City of Orlando, though i did a bunch of this with my own time. It was for the puppet theater the City used to have at the City Community Centers.

Each of the characters shown was also a puppet. I remember going out to get photos for this.

This for Facebook Art Challenge #3 of 3. Pam Treadwell

My pal Pam Pam Treadwell wants me to post 3 pictures here I drew. Well, I’ve been hunkered down again in the past few hours reworking a Swampy project. Got 18 pages penciled and inked. So, here’s them and three close ups.

Here’s Molly and Ainsley with Julie of Julianne’s Coastal Cottage and their hand painted cards!

After knocking out hand-made, watercolored Christmas ornaments this past Christmas, Julie Pointer,of Julianne’s Coastal Cottage in Mount Dora, brought up the idea of me creating similar Valentine’s Day cards. We set a date and that was this past weekend. It was supposed to be three hours on Friday and three hours on Saturday. Turned out to be Friday through Sunday and I turned out to be exhausted.

Love drawing trains and this one covers all the items this fellow mentioned. I didn’t get his name, but will tomorrow when he and his wife come back to have me paint a few more cards for them.

My main goal was to harken back to the days when we, as young folks, exchanged well illustrated Valentine’s Day cards with punny sayings.

Most of the overtime was catching up with requests. Some that even came through Facebook.

All were inked and watercolored while folks watched. I used a Koi portable watercolor set to add color.

The photos are all requests for the various names noted on the cards.

I was doing the caricature thing Saturday night at a wedding in Tavares, Florida, and here are a couple of photos…

This was a commissioned project of the publisher of the Orlando Sentinel and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. The request was of a caricature of the publisher and of his travels back and forth between cities. Request was to include plane and car he traveled in. Also, to include Marriott he stayed in Orlando. I asked for more likes of the publisher to fill out for space – and make it more fun for me. I added the city scapes. On teh Fort Lauderdale side I included the Sun Sentinel building, a few other well known structures and the founding structure in the area, the historic Stranahan House. On the Orlando side, the Sentinel buidling, otehr structures and the Lake Eola fountain. My knowing both cities was a big help getting this done.
This is a 16″x20″ watercolor painting on Arches watercolor board.

Drew my Swampy, the Swamp Ape, as Batman for ‘Batman Day’. with him is Trilby, the baby alligator, as Robin.

I attended the first meeting of the new Central Florida Expressway board meeting this morning. The organization previously had been racked by scandal and accusations. This new board for the toll roads in Central Florida will hold sway of toll roads and soon-to-be-toll roads in four counties- Orange, Seminole, Lake and Osceola. Members of the board acknowledged to previous problems and sought not to repeat them.

It was a standing room only room. Seemed it was mostly filled with road builders and contractors. The fellow who oversees construction of the organizations roads was kind enough to get me a chair, after standing for a good part of the meeting. Once seated, i pulled out the sketchbook and doodled the above and another page of sketches.

Really the title should be – “A Few Days Ago on the Drawing Board”. Working waaaay to late Tuesday night had me miss the Orlando Remembered, a board I serve on, meeting at the Orange County Regional History Center early Wednesday morning. Sara Van Arsdel, curator of the museum for the past twenty eight years is retiring. I remember her taking the position so many years ago as, Orlando native, Jean Yothers stepped down after ten years in the position. Hard to imagine so much time has passed!!! I sure admit I have not been a fan of certain activities at the museum. I have been a cheerleader of the unbelievable job Sara did of keeping the history museum in the 1920’s former Orange County Courthouse. A tough task, especially when Orange County was seeking office space for an expanding government in years past. It took her having exhibits that I hated to keep the museum in the courthouse alive. Kudos to Sara for that and for being in charge of the museum for 28 years!

This painting was done last week and passed on to long time dear friend Grace Chewning on Sunday, thanks to help from my father. Grace carted the card for folks to sign and the photo above was taken.

Here’s the inked version of the pencils posted earlier this week. Approved and ready for color, which I’ll get to next week.