May 20, 2009
Blew off weight training this morning to come into the office and fix the Ira Aten Classic Gunfight. I swapped out two images, took out the offending paragraph, replaced it with Mark Boardman's original copy, created a sidebar below the illustration, gave it a sidebar box and ID it as a "fascinating sidebar" to the fight. Meghan tweaked the syntax and the layout and we turned it over to Robert Ray who schmoozed it to the finish. Feels good. As I told Mark, I feel like I get to have my enchilada and eat it too.

Still cloudy and overcast. Experimenting with more color in my daily sketches:

Here's my first sketch on the Ira Aten fight:

But it struck me as too staid and typical. Glad I went with the Andrew McClelland image with the two guns blazing. After a day of realism I was in the mood for experimentation on my 8 remaining sketches:

Meanwhile, here's what I was sketching a year ago:

Really like that Spanish Dagger in the center. The little boy and portrait are from the cover of Ten Cent Plague, the book about comics being banned in the fifties. And here's what I was doing ten years ago:

Ten Years Ago Today

May 20, 1999
Need to go into Phoenix today and do some cover work on Bad Men [book]. Not looking forward to drive.

• Fixed cover

• Redid Black Bart map

• Redid U.S. Map—into outlaw hideout map

• Redid Northfield-Medelia map

• Fixed silver dollar entry

• Made corrections in sections I-II-III-V-VI

Dropped off True West [financial] facts and figures to Jim [Tri Star accountant]

[then on May 27 I wrote: "My Bad Men book seems rather weak as I proof it, but I can't decide if it's because I'm sick of the whole thing, or not. Exasperating."]

[On June 3, Jim, the Tri Star accountant, recommended not buying True West magazine. He walked me through the numbers pointing out that their net income for 1998 was at $90,000, while their salaries were at $132,000. "They have nothing to sell you," Jim said.]

And believe it or not, it gets worse. Wait until you see what the editor of Arizona Highways has to say about buying True West, plus Bob McCubbin's accountant also weighs in. Bet you can guess what he says. Ha.

"It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future date."
—Seneca