Friday, September 26, 2014

Is The New Photo Really Billy the Kid?

September 26, 2014
   Have you heard about the latest Billly the Kid photo surfacing? It has gotten some major media. Here is The Top Secret Writer commenting on KOB tv in Albuquerque about it:

Is It The Kid?

   I'm still monkeying with Mickey Free artwork that technically has been "finished" for at least three years. Got up this morning to tag and tabulate a pile of artwork, only to pull out the following scenes to tweak:

 
"Mickey Free, One Jump Ahead of The Rurales Redux"

   Late in the day, distant mountains get a reddish rim glow, and this scene of Mickey on his big Jack leaping an adobe wall near Fronteras, Mexico, was actually inspired by a similar scene at Point of Mountains near Marana, Arizona about ten years ago.

   The Ledge of Death sequence actually ran in True West several years ago in a graphic cinema spread, but when I saw these two scenes from the sequence, I couldn't help but enhance them and make them better:

 
"Mickey Rides Out On The Ridge of Death, Redux No. 1"

 
"Mickey Rides Out On The Ridge of Death, Redux No. 2"

   Both scenes were a tad loosey goosey, so I tightened them up. I also discovered a red felt tip pen makes for convincing striata across the ridges (in top panorama). Very effective.

 
"Mickey Rides Through The Cactus Choked river banks of the Batapilas River, Redux"

   When we went on the Copper Canyon Railway, we took a river trip to the east of El Forte and it was Chigger City. I had bug bites that irritated me for days. Really made an impression on me and I knew if the Mickster was traversing the Mexican high lands he would no doubt encounter the same obstacles.

   There's five more, but that's enough for today.

"History puts iron in biography."
—Walter Stegner