Penciled and inked this weeks ago. Thought I would be coloring not long after, but more car trouble and detours in life have kept me from being as timely as I’d like. Here’s the digital color version of the artwork. I’ll share the digital notice about the event as it approaches.

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.

Penciled and inked quite a bit today. Here’s one of the pieces – a dancing gator for Swampy’s Florida. This is set to be one of the prints that will be of a single character. Also it’s planned to be used for one of the greeting cards. Now it needs to be prepped for digital color.

Here’s the inked version of the pencils posted earlier this week. Approved and ready for color, which I’ll get to next week.

Here’s are the pencils for a proposed t-shirt design for a musician. It goes in for approval and let’s see what happens. If i can, I’ll try to post the final art as it comes along.

I ordinarily would include the background, but in this is for a t-shirt, simplicity is important. It might still be added. I do get into other details from chickens to fish. I’m likely to really tone those down quite a bit when inked.

This is the inked version of a gag cartoon I’m working on at the moment. My approach is a lot looser than I normally ink. I know that the color needs to tell part of the story, so I backed off tighter inking. The cartoon is due this week and I still have to format in a panel template and then color. I have a set of cartoons to color and plan to color them all at the same time.

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.

Happy Birthday, Taylor!!!

22 years ago today little Taylor Wayne was born. So much has happened since then. Never would have imagined that day that we would be here, today, in such a very different place than were thought of that day. Especially this year after the death of Taylor’s mother  just over two weeks ago. It was good to see Taylor and Jacob’s sister Amber as just three of us gathered after their mother’s death. A somber time and one where we hoped Taylor and Jacob are healthy and well. Also knowing they lived a far better life than where all was going prior to me making the impossible decision to have them in a safe place as their mother continued to get out of violent control.

These 22 years later Amber has children and living in North Carolina near her father. Their mother gone. There are those that helped so much that are gone, like the children’s grandfather, John, Milt Osborn and Alice Jones. All of us have found ourselves on a more severe rollercoaster of life thanks to the children’s mother, Edith.

I’ve not written much at all about all this since it all began for the very reason that Edith continually threatened violence to me and the boys. I was concerned that she might get some clue as to how to cause more chaos in any of our lives. The children didn’t deserve what they were put through and certainly Edith wasn’t going to be aided by me in anyway to return to her version of fun.

Best that can be hoped is that in Taylor’s 22nd year he is being the best that he can be and steering a course for success.

A very Happy Birthday, Taylor!!!

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.

This is art I was working on today for a small animated personal piece I’m doing for Thursday. More about that in a couple days.

I’m just creating a few drawings for the very short piece. I’ll add color and piece it together in Photoshop.