My annual ‪Christmas‬ card of ‪‎Florida‬ native critters inside The Ivy House in Ocala, Florida. Used lots of reference for the interior of the 1890 house/restaurant and had to skew things a bit to make the image more readable. Also,used more reference than years past for the critters. I tried to limit the animals a bit so that the interior of the building could be better felt and understood. I finished inking this Monday.

The Dorris Bobber Memorial Palmetto Bug is hidden somewhere. You’d need to see the actual card to find him, though.  This is the first year Swampy, Trilby and Zuber of Swampy’s Florida appear as part of the illustration.

This is the painting my father got for his birthday this year. Each year the painting involves a frog and some other subject matter. This year it’s frogs and Weeki Wachee mermaids..

The Weeki Wachee mermaids are legendary in Florida. It all goes back to over fifty years ago when young ladies donned some hand made fins to promote Weeki Wachee Springs, a tourist attraction featuring the natural springs that flow out to supply the Weeki Wachee River. The ladies used an underwater breathing apparatus developed by, inventor, Newt Perry, to be able to perform swimming routines underwater that visitors could watch in a specially made theater.

The theater is still there today as are the mermaids. The park is now part of the Florida Park system and visitors still travel there today to watch mermaids dance and swim :

This is a small drawing for a much larger project. It’s a fill-in piece. Tomorrow, I’ll be embarking on larger illustrations. Saw this blown up much larger on Facebook and realize, I need to use a brush even when doing tiny drawings like this. I disliked it so much that i pulled it and whipped up this Santa Frog to go in the shopper lady’s place for the Daily Inks.

Here’s my newest watercolor painting! This one is of Six Gun Territory. The scene is lifted from a postcard and the humans are replaced with frogs. This is the Father’s Day card I gave to my father this past week.

Here’s an illustration I did awhile back that I came across and thought I would share.