November 14, 2008
Drove down into the Beast this morning for cardio rehab with the girls. First work out without the heart monitor. Christie taught me how to take my own pulse (two fingers on the wrist, count beats for ten seconds, multiply by six and that's your heartbeat).

Worked this morning on El Kid jumping a snow covered fence on horseback. I'm gettin' this snow thing down!

Speaking of Snow. . .
"Just wanted to cool down your computer with this winter scene taken by cowboy, Erwin E. Smith way back in 1908 on the Texas panhandle. It looks like he's got on all the clothes he owns!



"Really like your snow and how deep it looks. Clean too! No yellow!

"I never lived where there wasn't snow for at least six months of the year and it got pretty dirty by April. Seen a lot of yellow snow painted by dogs, young boys, old boys too! Even made some yellow myself.

"Charlie Russell would have old cowboys come to visit him at his home in Great Falls in the winter. It annoyed his wife Nancy that these old punchers would rather use the backyard as a toilet rather than the one in the house. "Can't teach an old dog new tricks", I guess.

"I'm quite amazed how well you create snow and that very cold look when it's in the 80's outside!"

—Bill Dunn, Canada

Well, Bill, feast your eyes on this snowbank painting, finished last night:



I also reworked an earlier posted image. I just thought it needed a tad more detail (whipped into shape with a blue pen, by the way).



I also used a trick on this illustration I learned from my first watercolor teacher, Ina May Moore. She showed us how to use a tooth brush, dipping it in paint and then using your thumb, flip the brush hairs with your thumb, spraying, in this case, white paint, to create snow flakes. Cool, no? My tentative title for this painting is: "Amazing What A Cowboy Will Do For A Good Bowl of Green Chile." Ha.

And here's another Loosey Goosey, done yesterday afternoon when I had a brush full of paint and a hankerin' to push it around on a blank piece of paper. I call this one, "Moonlight On The Glacier":



My six sketches a day project is gaining steam. I'm rapidly closing in on the 7,500 mark (three-quarters of the way to 10,000 bad drawings). Here's 7,457 thru 7,463:



Lots of nice, subtle things on this page. I absolutely love the light wash image in the upper-right-hand corner. If I could do that every time out, I would be dangerous (rather than mildly irritating).

Catching Up With Gus
What’s the big deal about an actress getting her nose cut? Jack Nicholson got his cut in Chinatown! Just wondering if Ike Clanton might have relatives living in Alabama? There have been two incidents of cattle rustling in Decatur in the past couple of weeks. about $15,000 worth stolen.

—gus

"Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is."
—Thomas Szasz