Finished one painting, to be completely revealed later, and a great start on two more in just a few hours! Finished watercolor preparation and started painting a group illustration that features caricatures of a family involved in a football game. Another was penciling, preping and adding watercolor to a caricature of a child with their pet dog and video games and psychiatry! The third has to remain a mystery illustration including a caricature of a friend

Now on to home!

Did some hiking earlier in Circle B Bar Reserve. Much more now and to come over at Swampy’s Florida.

Many thanks to my pals of many years, Russell and Alice Sue Noell for their hospitality this weekend. Great vittles and socializing! Another dear pal, Debbie Schafer, called while I was there exclaiming, “You’re socializing!!??!” It is an unusual occurrence.

Right now dashing off some artwork before I get home!

Been doin’ that interactive illustrative life coaching thing this evening! A return visit for this family event. Great folks that included fellow civil servants, educators and an opportunity to get some nifty photos of a really cool historic home, now hair salon, I’ve wanted to get closeup photos of in St. Cloud!

An update to the video earlier today! Here’s what the two former white boards look like now… Lots to do, but got lots done this evening!

Had a blast today “signing” (drawing in) Swampy’s Florida books during the Florida SpringsFest. Here are a few photos. The stories behind most of the photos can be found on the Swampy’s Florida page.

Interesting what a father sets aside. Found a few decades of my artwork in a box of his. Newspaper art, comics strips, advertising pieces, comic books and personal artwork.

Spent weekend moving my father’s things to my house. Great thanks to brother Jeff Smith, his friend Steve and old pal James Goddard for the enormous amount of help! James even found a 40th birthday comic book I had done for him and his twin brother.

This is a mosaic of some of the sketches I did during the Democrat debate tonight. I’ll have to do more of this for more debates and the like. There are captions involved, but my working hard to get in no political debates or discussions here, I omitted those.

I’m working on a ‪#‎cartoon‬ ‪#‎illustration‬ with angry ‪#‎elephants‬!

There Was an Old Woman by Ellery Queen
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It was a couple dozen pages in that I knew I was in trouble. This Queen “mystery” is an unfortunate one where it’s clear the author’s knew the ending and then forced the poor constructed story.

There really is no excuse for how bad this is. Something happens very early that the Queen character would never have missed. Of course, that oversight was what the authors had to use to continue the story. Then a series of characters act as if police procedure is determined by the public. Again all to build the story. The worse part is that it’s do damned obvious. How did the duo, known as Ellery Queen, let this happen. Why did an editor not flag it. Sounds like an issue of speeding a contracted book out.

If you can view this more as a fairy tale, which isn’t hard once into the contents, then this book has some very distinct characters. Queen et al of the regular cast are written per usual with the exception that they are otherwise entirely inept in this book.

This really comes down to the horrible , obvious ending that is written as if Queen was a brilliant genius. Certainly this is the worse book I’ve read in the series.

Nevertheless, if all could be ignored, the writing is good…

Bottom line: i don’t recommend this book. 3 out of ten points.

View all my reviews

All inked and ready for watercolor!

This newest painting is set in an exclusive area of Brevard County in Florida. Thanks to, my friends, the Cronkhite family I was able to take photos in the area. I used those to construct this illustration. More to come!

The finished painting can be seen during the 4th Anniversary open house at The Knowledge Exchange December 4th in Palm Bay, Florida.