This is just a small sample of a twenty foot wide mural I’m starting on. This part is of a stream with a cypress tree. In the stream is a bear and bunny making there way along. The mural also includes a Cracker-style home, a Florida panther cooking and, of course, an alligator – playing a banjo. I’ll add updates as I go along.

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

Another of the upcoming Swampy’s Florida birthday card series. this time with a turtle. Have another coming with an alligator soon. I’ll post when the cards will be available for purchase.

Worked on a bunch of very different projects today. Here’s one of the Swampy’s Florida new set of birthday cards coming soon!

A few days ago I posted the setup for this watercolor painting. Here’s the finished artwork. It’s for a show of Florida artists at the Pine Castle Women’s Club in south Orange County starting June 1st. This will also be available as a Swampy’s Florida print (#38) soon.

The Pine Castle Women’s Club art show is comprised of Florida artists presenting Florida history in various mediums.

Here are the pencils for two people who volunteered at Silver Springs State Park to clean up the Silver River and area around it. it’s figured they’ve raised some $3,000 in cans collected.

This is the pencil version that I’m sending in for approval. After approval, I have another step for prep and then adding watercolor. I’m sure to post the finished artwork in the next couple days.

I have a painting to also paint and plan to do both at the same time.

Announcing a Swampy’s Florida Kickstarter program to get five Swampy’s Florida books produced! In the past three years I’ve produced 14 Swampy books, 37 prints, 2 DVDs and seven cards. There’s lots more to come! However, I’ve poured a ton of time in all of this and have more than run out of resources to produce more without backing. Funding will ensure more educational and activity books available to help young people know more about the great state of Florida.

Click here to head over to Kickstarter!

There’s a goal to get five funded by June 21st! Lots of goodies! I’ll even try to hand deliver the goodies if the donor falls within my travels this Fall.

The five books are:
–  Historical Women of Florida
– Florida History Puzzles and Games
– A Short History of  trains in Florida
– Birds of Florida
– Fish and Aquatic Life in Florida

All five will be coloring and travel guide books and able to be used in home schooling or just for fun!

There will be constant updates here as I build all five books.

But wait! There’s more!
There are four other books involved that are left over prior to the new arrangement with The Knowledge Exchange. These four will also be completed at the same time:
– Polk County- Titusville
– Dunnellon
– Marion County ABC
The funding will also loosen my time to wrap up these four books.

All will be available by Fall.

I hope you will help me in getting these books out and to beter help educate our young people of Florida’s incredible history, heritage and culture.

Thank you to The Knowledge Exchange, for so much help, and Dave Stewart, who produced the video on the site and gave sage advice, for all their help putting this together. I’ll have to share the video here as the next month goes along.

Thank you to all that donate to this project!
I’ll be posting updates here as this Kickstarter program continues!

Here is the colored version of artwork for the Stick Marsh Veterans Bass Challenge being put on by the Veterans Resource Committee of the Melbourne Regional Chamber of East Central Florida. HEre’s the post with the black and white artwork –  https://robsmithjr.com/blog/?p=7260

This’ll be a watercolor painting of early Florida orange pickers. This is the first step for me. Getting the general feel of the art in the image area. After this I’ll further prep the paper and then add watercolor.

I had to digitally darken the pencil art so you all could see it. The actual pencils are far lighter. The background, for instance, will be erased of pencil line and replaced with just watercolor. My add some defining lines, That will depend

Working on a cover for an upcoming Swampy’s Florida item. Inks tomorrow.