June 26, 2007
Found a dead chicken in the coop this morning. I think the heat got her. Still getting about four eggs a day.

Here's a catch-up on the sketchbook progress from the past week, mostly on the road. First up, I sketched a couple cool shots of the mountains outside Mogollon (top, left), then got to Lew's cabin, got real happy and went to bed. Woke up in the middle of the night and realized I hadn't done my six sketches, stumbled out to the car in the dark and got my sketchbook and did the bottom four images (left) from memory (of being on the road). The next day I stopped several times west of Horse Springs and sketched the distant plains of San Augustine. Decent effects:



The next page (below left) was done mostly in my motel room at Ho Jos in Albuquerque. Read the paper (USA Today) and was intrigued by a movie promo photo for The Mist (bottom), then pulled out a Remington book I had brought along and did a little sketch of him (middle) and fleshed out the rest with the usual, random stuff:



On Saturday I took my sketchbook out to End of Trail and between customers sketched on stuff. I bought a book at the Albuquerque Museum called "La Vida Brinca" (Life Jumps) by Bill Wittliff, who uses a primitive pinhole camera to capture Southwest and Mexican imagery. Very haunting and Old Westy (at least to me). The Billy image (upper right) was created from that influence. The left side images were done after attending a dinner party at the Huttons and getting home late. Paul had a couple of high school buddies in town from Indiana named Fork and Gravenstreter, plus their wives Jeri and Dayle, and they told many embarrassing stories on Mr. Hutton's spent youth. As I mentioned, I got up at 2:30 the next morning and headed for home on I-40. The sun started to peek across the long mesas as I approached Gallup and when I stopped for breakfast at Earl's in downtown Gallup ($11-something cash), I brought my sketchbook in and tried to capture some of that early morning dawn light, just tipping the tops of the mesas:



Had a long day at the office yesterday, didn't get home until 7:30, but sat at the kitchen to whip out these images. Once again, very influenced by Bill Wittliff's images (some are copied right from the book). Bill's name may sound familiar because he wrote the screenplays for Lonesome Dove, The Black Stallion, Legends of the Fall, The Perfect Storm, among others. He does the pinhole stuff as a hobby and he calls it tragaluces—light swallowers. Very inspiring stuff.



Classic Onion Headline de Jour
Women Have To Stop Starving Themselves Past The Point Of Hotness

"Excellence is achieved by the mastery of fundamentals."
—Vince Lombardi