December 30, 2009
Overcast and cool out, but not cold. A skeleton crew in the office, just me, Carole, Sheri, Abby, Ron, Lynda and Joe.

Worked this morning on a couple landscapes, starting with this one of a pale storm over Elephant Butte:

Decent colors. Also started a big Navajo sky study:

Need to put in the foreground. Going to be riders coming towards us and the tentative title is "Navajo Raiders Return."

I have a doctor coming in at 11:30 to look at paintings and while looking through my stack of studies in my home studio I found this little gem:

This was done last December when I was working on my El Kid graphic cinema piece for the magazine. I think I went with another, more complicated version, but I sure like this one. Nice mood, love the rider with the long tapaderos.

Got an email from Jeff Hildebrandt yesterday wondering if I had seen the new issue of American Cowboy. I told him I hadn't seen it yet, but why did he ask? Jeff was coy and he said that I would be somewhat surprised by what was on their cover. He was right (got our copy this morning at the office and Carole brought it in with a big smile):

My theory is that they put the name of a competitor, True West, on the cover because they:

• knew and didn't care

• weren't thinking straight because of all the egg nog

• didn't know and still didn't care

"There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas."
—Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky