I spent the day at Silver Springs State Park hand drawing and painting Valentine’s cards for a special price. While there I also promoted our Silver Springs Festival and Marion County Museum of History and Archaeology. I, as usual, fumbled trying to sell cards and went about cheerleading what I was promoting. Finally, folks got wise they were missing out on a great deal involving Valentine’s Day cards and I was put to the test to knock out many as the day closed. Notice it is nearly dark in one photo.

More Romer, the Recycling Squirrel I scrawled out for our City Hallways more than 20 years ago while I was with the City of Orlando. This one is a favorite of mine. John Everhart was a co-worker who had one heck of a sense of humor. That last panel is an exact pose you might find him in if you came through the engineering department.

The cartoon involved a bit of editorial that employees were told one day that we no longer had a place to park and had to park blocks away and walk to City Hall. I didn’t mind the walk. It’s that the City was slowly giving away all the land around the building to business investors. I remember so well after the old City Hall was visually imploded at the beginning of the film Lethal Weapon 3, Lew Oliver arranged the new City Hall to have property around the building that might be built and then leased to help City taxpayers. Within ten years Lew was gone and the opposite happened.

This is Day 4 of a 5 day challenge that I got flipped in my head. That and I’ve been busy. This is #1 0f 3 for the day. Heck, I almost need a legal description to work this thing out!

I’m apparently supposed to ask another artist to post 3 bits of artwork for 5 days and also ask another artist to post work. OK, AE Sabo​ – You’ll likely follow the rules better than I. 😀

Here’s something else I did while at the City of Orlando, though i did a bunch of this with my own time. It was for the puppet theater the City used to have at the City Community Centers.

Each of the characters shown was also a puppet. I remember going out to get photos for this.

This for Facebook Art Challenge #3 of 3. Pam Treadwell

My pal Pam Pam Treadwell wants me to post 3 pictures here I drew. Well, I’ve been hunkered down again in the past few hours reworking a Swampy project. Got 18 pages penciled and inked. So, here’s them and three close ups.

Here’s one of the Valentine’s Day cards I produced today. This is for her skin diving husband who looks for sea life of the octopus variety when he isn’t otherwise collecting guns. Nothing worse to encounter undersea than a well armed octopus. Should have had him say, “You kids keep off my lawn!”

I spent a few hours this evening inking a stack of pages involving a number of projects. I’m back in a local coffee shop. Second time this week with major accomplishments as a result. Been reading books of favorite writers, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley & others of the Round Table and their need for a place to hole away and get work done. Realized I need to do the same again.

It’s been exactly a year since I stopped going to my old coffee shop haunt due to political reasons. Since then have bounced around at chain spots and other places. Seems I have found a new spot- or as pals Craig Zablo & John Beatty call my “office” – to hunker down and really get work done

Here’s Molly and Ainsley with Julie of Julianne’s Coastal Cottage and their hand painted cards!

After knocking out hand-made, watercolored Christmas ornaments this past Christmas, Julie Pointer,of Julianne’s Coastal Cottage in Mount Dora, brought up the idea of me creating similar Valentine’s Day cards. We set a date and that was this past weekend. It was supposed to be three hours on Friday and three hours on Saturday. Turned out to be Friday through Sunday and I turned out to be exhausted.

Love drawing trains and this one covers all the items this fellow mentioned. I didn’t get his name, but will tomorrow when he and his wife come back to have me paint a few more cards for them.

My main goal was to harken back to the days when we, as young folks, exchanged well illustrated Valentine’s Day cards with punny sayings.

Most of the overtime was catching up with requests. Some that even came through Facebook.

All were inked and watercolored while folks watched. I used a Koi portable watercolor set to add color.

The photos are all requests for the various names noted on the cards.

Here’s my latest watercolor painting of frogs and Florida history. This is a frog in the place of aviator Tony Jannus, who is regarded as the pilot of the first scheduled airline in the world. This occurred over Tampa Bay in 1914. The passenger was a former St Petersburg mayor who won an auction to be the first passenger for $400.

A Highland Christmas by M.C. Beaton

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

‘A Highland Christmas’ is a pretty standard Christmas mystery with elements of Christmas and questions as to what happened to the elements of the Christmas story. Very light story that, unfortunately, has a political agenda.

Strongly intertwined in this “Christmas” story is the effort to reform a very religious family who the main character, Hamish MacBeth, thinks is missing out on what that character thinks Christmas is. Instead of being open minded to others beliefs, MacBeth, through the writer, labels the family as “bigoted”. The religious family is not trying to change the MacBeth’s beliefs. They are just minding their own business and abiding their personal beliefs. The actual bigot in the story, MacBeth, proceeds to force the religious family to his beliefs. This being the goal of the author, the religious family bends to the closed minded MacBeth’s preposterous efforts to “save” the family.

Having Beaton’s character showing her main character having a discriminating drive against a family’s religious belief might have been better to explore in a non-“Christmas” book. To have it as the basis of a “Christmas” book is a bit tasteless.

For a story that is usually written in the reverse of aggressive vs. innocents, Beaton writes the story and characters well.

Bottom line: I do not recommend this book. 4 or 10.

View all my reviews

Had dinner last night with fellow cartoonist George Pieper and his wife Noreen at Sammy’s Italian Restaurant in Ocala, Florida. George nabbed a photo of me whipping up a painted ornament for them. Did you know the perfect paint for Santa’s suit is spaghetti sauce?

Dropped this off to my pal Robin in Ocala. She being a science fiction fan gave me the rare opportunity to draw a Yuletide intergalactic scene!

The drawing was to also answer the age old question: Does Santa wear his space helmet with his beard in or out? Space air does wonders for Santa’s beard!