March 13, 2009
Went home around ten and bailed right into a series of Alamo covers. In typical fashion, I ruined two immediately. Here's they are:

Looks more like Rosy The Riveter than Davy Crockett. Didn't like the building development either. The other one ended up looking more like Che:

This one could be called "The Wrath of Crockett," as Davy cleans out the money changers on Alamo Plaza. Ha. Too biblical for my tastes.

Kept coming back to the original study, which is smaller than the others (it was intended just as a study):

Hmmmm, I really like the compactness of the buildings in this one, with the Alamo squeezed in, and overshadowed by all the signs (which, of course, is the entire point). I have at least another four hours to go, lettering all the signs and bringing out the detail in the skyscrapers. This is problematic because I'm leaving at six in the morning for a book festival in Tucson and then on to Cottonwood Springs to see the probable site of the Curly Bill vs. Wyatt Earp confrontation. Won't get back until Sunday night and issue goes to press on Wednesday.

Here is another set of sketches that shows the basic components I'm trying to squeeze in:

All my paintings are failures until they are successes unless they stay failures, which happens more than I'd like to admit. I also realized this afternoon this is really a glorified editorial cartoon with aspirations of N.C. Wyeth. Speaking of Wyeth, his studio mate when they both studied under Howard Pyle, has something he wants to add to all this:

“I would work my heart out over a series, and then it all seemed small and fleeting when transferred to the magazine page which people turned over and forgot in an instant.”
—Allen True on his disappointment with magazine illustration, 1905