March 3, 2004
Went home yesterday at three and bailed into the fifth cover painting. Worked until eight last night, stopping only to chase down driveway stones, pet the dogs and eat. Aimed for a very yellow-gold color scheme. It’s much closer to my mind’s eye image. I dropped the angle right down onto the railroad tracks, so the horseback Warrior is jumping across the tracks, as opposed to over the entire train as in the previous cover painting.

Got up this morning at six and finished the gouache painting by 8:30. Shot a roll of 35mm film of the cover and ran it up to Foothills Photo at 9.

Got into office and fought copyright questions regarding next month’s Classic Gunfights. We are using several Alamo maps and who owns them, who gets paid, is quite convoluted, to say the least. Sent out a flurry of e-mails trying to clear everything up.

Speaking of flurries, got more than a few congrats this morning on last night’s Billy the Kid doc on the Discovery Channel. Only one negative and that’s from one of the honchos (Dolores) at the History Channel, who is not amused that I did “the competitors’ show.” Evidently Drew Gomber of the Hubbard Museum is really in the dog house over this (someone told me he is the narrator?). We may be both cut out of their upcoming series (the one I filmed in Tucson several weeks ago). Oh, the petty politics of tv. It was Martin Mull who said, “Show Biz is high school with money.”

“Success is simple: do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.”
—Andrew Hargadon