Live hiking along the Withlacoochee River!

Here’s the color version of the artwork shown earlier this week. I just finished coloring this after a very long day today.

I was out for the opening of a new bridge for hiking over the Withlacoochee River here in Florida. The path to the bridge was supposed to be a hiking trail, but ended up being a roadway for emergency vehicles and bicyclists. I have photos and wrote about it here.

Got the prep work done a couple days ago. Added watercolor while painting live during the Art Walk in Mt Dora at Julianne’s Coastal Cottage. I still need to work on details in the illustrations to get it to pop out more.

Penciled this during a meeting tonight as I prep for a series of watercolor paintings I need to get done. It’s part of a Swampy’s Florida series that will soon be available to interior designers through a Miami company. There will be two series. One much like this of Florida locations and Florida critters. The other series is of beach scenes around the state.

This is just the pencils of the artwork. Next I prep the art to be watercolored. I’ll be painting the art  this Friday during the Art Walk in Downtown Mt. Dora, Florida, at Julianne’s Coastal Cottage store. I’ll be doing it live. If you’re in the area, please come by and say ‘Hello!’.

I did the penciling during a meeting of the Springs Alliance which I’m involved with. Certainly an appropriate time to be working on artwork about the Rainbow River.

This is from a photo taken by a friend of a half fallen cypress tree on the Rainbow River in Marion County, Florida

This is Estus Whitfield, who has been an environmental adviser to four Florida governors and one of the most respected of Florida environmentalists. He co-authored the Save our Everglades program that setup initiates to help clean water for the future of South Florida and it’s residents. He has also steered a series of other outdoor programs critical to the state of the Florida outdoors and all of us who live here.

I recently finished a series of paintings of speakers who spoke at an event I was involved at Silver River State Park back on June 23rd. The event was created to help educate folks about water and springs issues here in Florida. I’ll feature the 5 illustrations in the next week.

Headed over to Silver River State Park about 5 miles. Above is a sketch from across the Silver River at the boat landing at the end of the River Trail.

After that I took the Fort King Military Trail. Below is a sketch from that I added color to.

At the boat launch all these little children were squealing about seeing a turtle. The softshell poked more of his head out and part of his body. He was a huge sucker. I pointed out to the little folks that the turtle was about the size of a little red head there and he was probably hiding under the launch to keep away from hungry gators. Their eyes got all big and scampered back so they might spot the shy critter again. Below is as much of the turtle I could get in a photo.

There’s more about this hike at Swampy’s Florida.