May 31, 2004
Nice day at home. Kathy took her brother Don to the airport this morning and I worked in the studio. But first I took Buddy Boze Hatkiller and the pickup down the road to a couple big piles of rocks (got permission from the owners) and collected some 56 flat rocks, not that I’m counting.

If you missed the Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral show it repeats this coming Saturday, June 5 @ 7 pm, ET, on the History Channel. Yes, Julie this is the show where I said “In 1872, Wyatt Earp wasn’t hunting buffalo, he was hunting other game. . .probably beaver.” Notice the nice edit.

Got a nice watercolor goin’ this morning of John Wesley Hardin smokin’ a seegar, eyes glazed, hot under the collar. It’s got some nice subtleties. Hope I don’t ruin it in the morning when I invariably come to the conclusion I can improve it..

Went through a ton of photo reference in boxes and culled much of it into new categories for the top secret book I’m working on. Found much stuff I had forgotten I even had. A month ago Gus and I were trying to do a bird’s eye view of the Custer Battlefield and today I found a series of rare aerial photographs of the battlefield which I got from Tom Swinford about eight years ago and forgot about. I told Kathy if I locked myself in the studio and just utilized the stuff that’s in here, I’d be here for at least a decade and not run out of reference.

It’s funny, in the old days I would try and write and when it got rough, I’d draw to relax. Now I draw and when it gets rough, I write to relax. Someday I’ll get the balance back but I’ll probably be too old to know it.


“Most human beings waste some 25 to 30 years of their lives before they break through the conventional lies which surround them..”
—Isadora Duncanv