November 15, 2006
Working hard on fire effects for the big prairie fire set piece. Here's a page from my sketchbook



Still need to add in a key horseback figure in the big set piece. I've got good horseback reference from several John Ford classic Westerns such as Fort Apache and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. I just got Rio Grande from Netflix and I need to inventory that today. Meanwhile, I'm going to lunch and plan to plop that rider in the left-hand corner, trying to make it around the leaping flames.

Carson Mell is in town and he and his dad, Ed, came out last night and we went to dinner down at Tonto. Sat out on the patio (they have heaters but it was quite nice). Fun time talking to them and planning our next trip. While we ate I called Tomas on my cell and passed it around. Ed bought.

The proofs for the January issue arrived this morning from Banta in Kansas City. Everything looks very good. The cover story is "Cowboys Are Indians," about a tribe that morphed into ranching in a successful way. Great photos! And, of course, the new colorized Honkytonk Sue is in there. Needs massaging. A little too strong on the color, but I'll get it yet.

Dwight Tindle's memorial service will be this Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Camelback Seventh Day Adventist Church (next to the Phoenician Resort).

I need to start shipping some 25 paintings to Albuquerque for a big Billy the Kid artshow they are mounting next year. Paul Andrew Hutton is the curator and he picked out a bunch of my paintings last time he was in town.

"Since heterosexual marriage is such a disaster, why on earth would anybody want to imitate it?"
—Gore Vidal, when asked his opinion on gay marriage