A bunch of old cartoonist pals, and a bunch of other cartoonists, got together today to draw for children at Florida Hospital Orlando. Here’s Noreen & George Pieper, me, Dana Summers and Mark Simon.

Thanks to Mark Simon and Heather Worley (Thank you, Heather, for this photo!) for putting this together as part of the Florida Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. Also, thanks, Mark, for getting the chapter restarted again!

Before and after the bit o’ hiking I did at Upper Tampa Bay Park I was doing some Swampy’s Florida ‪#‎Sunday‬ Service visits.

The first was a visit with the friends I was staying with this past weekend. Sandy Rhodes Huff & her husband Bill attend Heritage United Methodist Church in Clearwater. Bill was singing with the church quartet. Thanks to them for their hospitality again and cheers to Bill for a great performance. The first sketch is of the pastor done from the back of the room, as usual.

From Chattahoochee, I quickly made my way to Torreya State Park, near Bristol, to get travel and hiking information and to add a second live video using the new Facebook option. Here, I take the north trail from the Gregory House where the six cannon encampment had been for the confederacy during the Civil War.

You can plan a trip to Torreya State Park here: https://www.floridastateparks.org/park/Torreya

Day 3 cartooning people’s lives. This time in Tallahassee. Sun got the best of me. That and maybe a few hundred miles of driving over past 48 hours.

So, tomorrow: Time for some Florida exploring and hiking.

Oh, and great to hear from my pal Jackie Mia Joyner today! Glad to get a Lala update!

Been doin’ the drawing life stories (Thanks, John Read) thing tonight along the Kissimmee River, near Lake Wales!

Something else my Swampy’s Florida does is provide artwork for Florida based businesses. This is a sketch for a large project I’m working on. I look forward to showing more of this project very soon.

The Unimportance Of Being Oscar by Oscar Levant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A huge lot of fun is this volume of Oscar Levant’s memories of his life.

Whether the many stories and one liners are true or not is whether you can believe a person who has been in and out of mental institutions and ensconced in pharmaceuticals can have reliable memories to pick through. Nevertheless, the stories are very good and extremely readable.

The most important thing to know if one wishes to read this book are, at least, 75% of the people mentioned throughout. Otherwise a reader will have no appreciation or understanding of the context, humor and importance of what is included. The time frame is from the 1920s to the 1960s.

The book is also hardly organized at all. Of what I know of Levant, this well reflected his thought process. There is an invaluable index.

A personal note: I’ve been looking for this book for decades. The day I came across it, I started reading – as I drove away from the place I found it! After the death of my father a bit over a month ago, I know the Snuffy Smith phrase, “Time’s a’wastin’!” is to live by.

Bottom line: I highly recommend this book. 10 out of 10 points.

View all my reviews

Lots done in 3 hours at this coffee shop! Finished 1 painting, almost finished another, started another #Florida one plus sketches for a client….and STILL way behind!

http://store.theknowledgeexchange.com/collections/swampys-prints

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!