November 23, 2009
Had a very nice weekend. On Saturday night, Charlie and Linda Waters came down from Vegas for Dan Harshberger's birthday dinner at our house. The Waters brought three bottles of Argentina wine and I made Tacos de Bell. We had a grand time.

On Sunday morning, the Waters met Kathy and I, and our son Thomas Charles (yes, he's named for Charlie Waters) at the Matador at Second Street and Monroe deep inside the Beast. While we were all enjoying our huevos rancheros, in walked Jimmy Covarrubias, former MCUHS classmate and fellow artist. Jimmy and his compadres (from the Latin American Art Alliance) are opening a Latin Art Gallery just down the street and, after breakfast, we all went down there to see the layout. Fun seeing Jimmy. He has done well for himself. Check out his artwork.

Worked more on Blazing Pols (January cover story for True West) yesterday afternoon:

Trying to marry the dying donkey head to a frontier gunfighter body, but in that style of 1890s editorial cartooning. Utiliized several old bound editions of Punch (from 1881) to capture the cross hatching techniques:

I bought the Punch original copies in Santa Fe many years ago. I think I paid $400 for the set, but I have spent countless hours enjoying them and copying the superior pen and ink styles inside of each. Finally, came up with an approximation of a rogue (and tipsy) elephant:

Here, I sketched in a derringer in the Elephant's trunk, but I may change that to a liquor bottle. Going to be a sweet cover. Hope to have something today to send down for Dan The Man to work on.

"Being good is just a matter of termperament in the end."
—Iris Murdoch