Swampy’s Florida Prints – Picnic at Biscayne Bay.

Here’s the last of the nine watercolor paintings of Biscayne Bay beach set. This was the last one I needed to finish and I only found time today to do it. This wraps up the set and will show all nine when they are set for the gallery catalog they are going in.

Pirates and Buried Treasure on Florida Islands by Jack Beater

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very good collection of supposedly true pirate stories that took place along the Florida coast. Jack Beater is a good writer who helps make the stories seem true, though there may be more legend than accurate history in the tales. He bases much on the legend of Jose Gaspar and tethers further tales to the legend. There are no footnotes, which doesn’t help the question of what is real and not. Much is based on hear say. Not that I think Beater is trying to pull the wool over one’s eyes. I believe he truly believed the stories he penned. It’s just that over time, many pirate tales have come into question. One assurance is that he does know the geography of Florida and accurately describes the various locations mentioned, thus if the stories may be suspect, locating where the nefarious pirates may have plundered and lived can easily be understood.

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Just chug-a-lugged out eleven pencil drawings of a series of beach scenes I’ll be doing later in February.

Stopped for dinner at Ashley’s Restaurant in Rockledge, Florida, for dinner and to get a little work done. Ate a fine prime rib and got the 11 drawings done in two hours and a half!

More to come as I work on each. Suffice it to write that I’ll be using lots of yellow ochre and cerulean blue!

Re-Discover Florida by Hampton Dunn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Florida historian, Hampton Dunn, tags a series of Florida historic locations with one page reviews and history. The state is well covered by being broken up in three parts, Central, East and West Coasts. The volume is dated and a number of the locations are either gone in inaccessible at this time. Still, all are well written and worth the view of Florida history in 1969.

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Guide for Hire by Gladys and Ed Fortner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For a book from 50 odd years ago, this one sure does cover it’s intended territory as a guidebook of a portion of interior Florida in a rather complete and creative way. Graphically it reflects it’s time period, but in ways that would be over done in today’s digital onslaught. A ton of information is scattered in nooks and crannys of the graphics, thus providing more than the narrative provides. It’s a terrific piece for it’s time, but also an example to take note of in today’s guidebook design.

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Been penciling and inking and penciling and inking and… I guess ya get the idea…

Got lots done on the upcoming ‘Swampy’s Florida: Titusville’. Lots more to do. And that’s besides this Swampy book!

A Socrates Cafe is a group that gathers and talks issues for a couple hours. I attended one today and, as usual, sketched the ideas we discussed. Here are a couple pages from the sketchbook.

Here are a few caricatures I drew near Sarasota on September 6th. Started off outside.

It soon got dark….

So we all came inside.

This is one of the last I drew after more than 4 hours non-stop.  I was pooped!

On July 28th I introduced the new Florida History text book at The Knowledge Exchange. I conducted to talks. One about cartooning and the other about Florida history. Above are some from the Florida history class.

During the cartooning class I got the attendees to contribute various ideas and we all came up with this scene.

Here’s a close up of the artwork.

Florida: Enchantment of America by Allan Carpenter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Enchantment of America: Florida’ is part of a 1960s series that each cover a different state and written for students in junior high school. My experience with this is that state series typically do a poor job of telling the history of Florida. This one is an exception. Especially refreshing to read the non-PC version of Florida history that is setup in all Florida history books I’ve seen published in the past fifteen years. I also like the author’s writing style. The watercolor illustrations are outstanding. That is another difference in a young person’s textbook from the 1960s and the textbooks of today. Today’s textbooks have little artwork. Illustrations in today’s textbooks are usually boring computer graphics and static photographs. I recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn about Florida history.

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History of Brevard County Vol. 2 by Jerrell H. Schoffner
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This volume of Brevard history is in sharp contrast to the first volume by Jerrell Schoffner. The first book was very thorough and related the ups and downs of the community. The second volume drowns in numbers of all shapes and sizes. Numbers of people moving in, numbers of costs to various construction projects, too many results of elections and way more information than needed about the space program. There is very, very little about the community so well covered in the first volume. There are glances at Erna Nixon and various politicians and too many involved with the space program. It was as if all that happened in Brevard County from 1950 to the printing of the volume in 1992 was space and political elections. I can think of any number of various milestones that occurred in Brevard County in that time. Some focus on other businesses might’ve been fun. Just a few paragraphs about the Thompson family and Dixie Crossroads restaurant would’ve been interesting and much needed in this very dry effort that falls short of what Schoffner is known for in covering history.

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