I was part of the symposium about our Florida springs Tuesday night, named ‘Sacred Springs’. I was setup in the front of the auditorium and illustrated each speaker as they did their presentations to the audience. There were nine speakers this time and I couldn’t finish them all at the event. In the next couple weeks I’ll share some of the watercolor paintings I worked on. I didn’t get to finish as many as in other symposiums due to the limited time and the amount of speakers. I’ll be going back to finish the paintings.

‘Sacred Springs’ was a gathering of experts of our Florida springs. Speakers included Johm Moran, Dr. Robert Knight, of the Springs Institute; Guy Warwick, the Felburn Foundation; Jim Stevenson, Wakulla Springs Alliance; Doug Ray, Ocala Star-Banner & Gainesville Sun; Ryan Smart, Florida Conservation Coalition; Karen Ahlers, Florida Defenders of the Environment and Whitey Markle, Suwanee-St. Johns Sierra Club & Florida troubadour.

A surprise audience member was former Governor Buddy MacKay.

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

I was part of an Hospice of Marion County fundraiser held at The Ivy House in Ocala, Florida. It was a terrific event with everyone decked out in their vintage best for this first annual Vintage Gala. I met some really great people who have done some extraordinary things for others. Amy, below, has been counseling children for fourteen years. The average time people help young people with severe difficulties is just a few years. Most I’ve met that run beyond the few years tend to be cold and a bit distant. Amy has an amazing attitude considering her length of service with Hospice.

Judy’s husband hunts the deer and hog and she cooks ’em Southern style!

Below is Mimi, who owns the location of the event, The Ivy House. The Ivy House in Ocala is the second location. the first location is further west in Williston, Florida. Both are situated in historic homes and both are known for their outstanding Southern fare. I had the chance to speak to Mimi after the event about her restaurant, it’s 61 year history, their cookbook and many other things!

This has been a busy week of caricature events! this one in Altamonte Springs, Florida. A medical office brought me in for an open house. The event went very well. I was concerned because i haven’t been sleeping much in the past few weeks and especially the past week. My likenesses could have been better, but the engagement with the crowd was the best at this event than others in the past few weeks. What really assisted that was the lack of blaring music/soccer games and other noise. It gave me a chance to interact with the crowd and working at getting the crowd to interact with themselves.

Also dropped off an illustration that got got bogged down in massive miscommunication and ended up getting kicked back to me. Haven’t had that happen in – well, I don’t know when. Quite jarring and surprising. Part of the problem, as I saw it, is that I thought the conversation between me and the client were also part of the instructions to get the artwork done.

Apparently, we should have gotten more familiar with each other. It also would have helped if I hadn’t been on the road so much and finding myself in various parts of the state with car problems so that I could have communicated with the client better and not worked on the art work off and on. I also struggled with the project as the request was to create the illustration with pencil. i thought that would be a breeze and approached it as I approach all my illustrations. However, this had a lot of mechanical parts in a rather boring setting and that i tried to enliven it a bit, which I work at in all my work. The client, it seems was looking for a very technical look which is positively not something I do.

Bottom line is that client wasn’t familiar with my work as I thought and if I had developed a contract between us, we might have better nailed down what was expected. In that I was doing the project for a relative of a friend of mine, a contract didn’t seem necessary. I do my best to avoid these traps. Though they come up at times, I have always done my best to salvage the project and can’t think of a time that a project crashed and burned. The client does want to regroup and reapproach the project, but I think we are too far apart in what I do and what they want, so I’m stepping away so that they can find an illustrator who can accomplish far better what they want. Lots of time and materials poured into the project. My loss, just at a time when i can’t afford to let that happen.

Possibly more caricatures Saturday. But that’s likely the last for a week or so. I have plenty else to do and will be featuring here in the coming week.

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 color version of the airboat art. This is to be used on tishirts involving this musician. I’ll let you all know how to get a t-shirt here, when it’s available, if you all would like.

Was in Gainesville this evening drawing for a wedding. Above was the matriarch of one of the families. Though in a wheel chair these days she still tends her garden and works through books of word searches. Seems to me an answer to longevity – Goals made and maintained.

Below are more from the event.

Didn’t get much artwork done today. Started painting this illustration. Got the hard part out of the way, but had to move on due to an important National Cartoonists Society meeting this weekend.

The last few days have had me sidelined involving a couple of charitable groups I’m with from Orlando Remembered to the National Cartoonists Society. That time invested has really cut time from getting artwork done. A bunch of the charitable work is to slide me a bit further from it so I can concentrate on work more. So, I’m not getting as much art done as I need to. Posting artwork everyday has brought that to my attention loud and clear this week.

This couple from South Carolina have requested a larger illustration than I usually do. 16″ x 20″. They provided a good list of activities they are or will be involved in. I added the majority in to the drawing.

I’ve prepped the art and it’s ready for watercolor. I’ll get to painting it soon and post it here.

Here’s the finished watercolor version of the penciled artwork I showed yesterday. I admit I made an error with the bag of recycled cans over the shoulder of the fellow. Had to do this one pretty quickly and lost my concentration of rendering the fellow’s shoulder and the bag. Fixed it the best I could.

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.