April 28, 2008
Got five eggs today and the air is still cool for my walk. No million dollar women on horseback at the end of the road to disrupt my turnaround. Actually, no diversion for Buddy Boze Hatkiller to disrupt the women and scare their horses. So my morning was quite nice. Turned on the airpad cooler in the studio for the first time this season and even after a half-century on the desert, nothing smells quite as sweet as fresh cooler pads, soaking and wafting on cool air.

I have been adamant that I do something different with my life now that I have a second chance and one of the things I've come upon is Do The Hardest Thing First. I write down five things that I don't want to do but need to do. After my walk I pick one and bail in. Yesterday it was "start the '49, pull it out of the garage and move the drums from the breezeway back into the corner of the garage." I've been putting this off for a month. I just knew the Ford wouldn't start (it's been sitting there since the Wipeout). But after I primed the carburator with some fuel it turned right over and the next thing you know I was done and checked it off the list.

Yesterday afternoon I got my oil paints out and took a good whack at the commission "Ambush At Stagecoach Pass." That felt good as well.

So every morning I pick something I don't want to do, and I do it first thing. No newspaper and no email until I do this.

My Son, The Peruvian Basketball Coach
Just got this from Tomas in Peru. Here's my number one son with his basketball team:



Here's a couple pages from my new sketchbook:



Those are the final studies for the Illinois book cover. Here's a crack at hands and dynamic torsos, copied from Burne Hogarth (who I took a class from back in the 80s):



And here's Tom Horn and friends done in a Freddy Remington style:



Still wrestling with torsos and anatomy:



So, my latest efforts are to meet tasks head-on. I have spent my life avoiding tasks until the last possible moment and it has caused me untold grief. Gee, I wonder if anyone named Chandler has anything to say about this?

"What if everyone was doing everything they could to avoid effort--and yet the secret of happiness was, in fact, effort?"
—Steve Chandler

Oh, that's good.