Rainy Sunsets and Former Flames

December 18, 2014

   A rainy day sunset last night as I drove home:



 
Rainy Day Sunset In Cave Creek, Arizona

   Found a batch of old photographs in the garage last weekend while I was looking for something else, of course.

 
BBB and the real 66 Kid,  Allen P. Bell at the annual Route 66 Fun Run in Seligman, Arizona

   Also found a photograph of me and Terry Townsend at Rau Advertising where we were hard at work on the Razz Revue magazine.

 
Terry Townsend and BBB sitting in the middle of the Razz business, circa 1975

   Here's another couple from that era, Tommy and Liz Vascocu of KDKB fame:



 
Tommy and Liz Vascocu, 1975

"The loneliness social media aspires to repair is the loneliness of empty streets, Dairy Queens, the loneliness of high school. the loneliness of Mexican gardeners, the loneliness of lawns. The advantage of shopping online, Silicon Valley encourages us to believe is, that one need not contend with bodies, with business hours, with complete sentences. The loneliness social media aspires to repair becomes the loneliness social media creates and exports to the world as 'connection.'"
—Richard Rodriguez

700 Hats Ago

December 17, 2014
    Here's a grainy photo I found last weekend that was taken in Tucson a long time ago. It's hard to date these but I think it's safe to say this was at least 700 hats ago.



BBB 700 Hats Ago

"And that was his secret: he was always at play."
—R.O. Blechman

Goodbye Gus

December 17, 2014
   The newest issue of True West magazine (February, 2015) has a link to a slide show on Gus Walker's work and photos from his life.

 
Gus Walker, BBB and Bob McCubbin posing for the back cover of our Classic Gunfights series

Gus Walker The Mapinator

"The pessimist sees a pile of horseshit and thinks that's all there is. The optimist thinks that if there is enough horseshit around, there must be a pony someplace."
—an alleged neighborhood wag, as quoted by Norman Lear in his new memoir "Even This I Get to Experience." Gus would have loved this joke.

Mickey Free With Delchay's Head

December 15, 2014
   Went home for lunch and finished two cover ideas to illustrate Paul Andrew Hutton's hard hitting cover story in the next issue (March) on a little known chapter in the Apache Wars: "The Severed Heads Campaign," when Gen. George Crook paid bounties on seven Apache heads, literally. Both paintings depict Mickey Free bringing in the head of Delchay. Here is the original cover sketch idea:

 
Daily Whip Out: "Mickey Free With The Head of Delchay Cover Sketch"

   From there I went with a little more obtuse angle, trying to difuse a bit of the graphic angle:

 
Daily Whipout: "Mickey With Delchay's Head, No. 2"

   I may have overworked it, here is the first version before I added the pistol, etc.

 
Daily Whip Out: "Mickey With Delchay's Head, No. 1"

   When I finished this morning, I worried that it's too comic bookish for True West and so I grabbed an unfinished portrait of Mickey and added Delchay a little more subtle like:

 
Daily Whip Out: "Mickey Free With Delchay's Head Sitting On Crate"

  Scans went down to Dan The Man at 2:30 and we'll see what magic he comes up with to make this fly. This quote is a repeat, but bears repeating:

"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."
—Edgar Degas

Cholla Horror Story

December 15, 2014
   Brisk out this morning. Went for a walk about nine. Here are a couple more views of Cholla Central:



Cholla Central No. I



Cholla Central, No. 2

   Cholla sometimes takes over in areas that have been cleared or burned (it's the first plant to thrive). One of the local theories is that the Hohokam (or Sinagua) farmers who lived in the cave across the way, cleared the plateau we live on for farming. Makes some sense.

Warning: Manhood Cringing Story Ahead
   The worse case of cholla attachment I have ever witnessed was when our neighborhood dog Smokie came yelping into our yard with cholla thorns stuck to his hind legs and butt. I quickly removed them with a comb, but then I realized he had a more serious cholla attachment underneath. Peering between his quivering legs I saw it—right on the full length of his penis and scrotum. A long cholla shaft was jammed flat and the spines were all the way in at 45 degree angles to each other! Smokie literally jumped up on a picnic table and whimpered for me to help him. Every time I approached with the comb, he would growl, but then whimper, and I finally had to get a pair of pliers to finish the job. It was very traumatic for both of us, but I could not imagine the pain that must have caused him. We assume Smokie got into it with a javalena and he was pushed or fell into a cholla patch, probably in the area of the above photos.

"Cholla hand warmer? No thanks?"
—Old Vaquero Saying

Cholla Central

December 14, 2014
   Back from Tucson and a book signing at the east Broadway Barnes & Noble. Whenever I walk into a Barnes & Noble, my first stop is the magazine section to see where a certain magazine is displayed. We request to be in the History section but, like here, we are lumped into the Current Events section. Can you spot True West in this crowded rack?



True West newsstand position at Barnes & Noble, Tucson

   Okay, here's a closer look:



True West battling it out with Wild West and Time-Life's Greatest Battles (and, Cartoons of the Year 2014)

   Had a respectable crowd and met some fine people, including this gent:



Flint holding out a custom made money clip he gifted me.

   Afterwards, John Langellier treated Kathy and I to a dinner at Pastiche on North Campbell and afterwards we had a nightcap at the classy, old school Arizona Inn. It was a beautiful evening so we sat outside and had a B&B before we went back to our B&B (The Adobe Rose Inn).



Kathy, John and BBB doing a selfie on the patio at Arizona Inn

   Last Wednesday evening as we were on our way to the Wingets Christmas party we came upon two cars blocking Old Stage Road. Come to find out several neighbors had heard a woman's screams and according to the driver of one of the cars, the woman was screaming, "Help me! Help me! Get a gun!" The women in the car, who I did not know, live about a half mile north of us and their quotes were confirmed by the woman who takes care of the horses at the old Van Horn Ranch. She, in fact, called the sheriff's office to come investigate. We drove further north and saw a guy out in his driveway and we slowed down to ask if he had heard the screams. "Yes, it was my grandson," the guy said matter of factly. "He fell in some cholla and was calling our for his grandma. She's got him fixed up and calmed down." So, apparently, "Help me, get a gun!" was actually something like "Help me, grandma!"

Cholla Rhymes With Goya and Coincidently, La Jolla
   At any rate, cholla cactus, or, as we called it as a kid, "jumpin' cactus," is a diabolically designed cacti with 45-degree angle fish hook thorns that appear to jump because when you brush by, even slightly, and you snag even one, the whole cactus seems to follow suite and jump onto you. Another neighbor was riding his horse and tried to go up a steep embankment, the horse went over backwards into a stand of cholla and the more he tried to roll out, the more he got cholla in him. They called the vet, but they couldn't save him and he had to be put down. If you've never seen one, my whole front yard is full of them and everyone who lives out here, my family, the kids, the dogs and the chickens give this plant a very wide berth.



Cholla Central

"There are many reasons we broke up. There was a religious difference: I'm a Catholic and she's the devil."
—Adam Ferrara

Poisoned Pen and Cowboy Kin

December 11, 2014
   My book editor, Stuart Rosebrook, took a couple of photos of me working the crowd at Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale on Tuesday night:

 
BBB lays it on thick at Poisoned Pen on Tuesday night, part I


 
Poisoned Pen crowd number two, that's Jack Alves, far right, who played lead guitar in the Razz Band.

  A very spirited crowd. We sold 35 books by my count.

   Meanwhile, I was cleaning in the studio and ran across a contact sheet of photos from the 1920s that was in my mother's belongings. Lillie Louise Guess—everyone called her Bobbi—was born in Lordsburg, New Mexico in 1925. The Guess family ranched and farmed in the Animas Valley, also known as the Boothell of New Mexico, and for awhile, her parents, Bob and Louise Guess, had a house at Stein's Pass which is right on the Arizona-New Mexico line. These photos were taken when they lived there:

 
Bob and Louise Guess outside their house at Stein's Pass, New Mexico, 1926

   A couple miles north of Steins was the Volcano Mine, which I visited in 1977, but very little remained. The mine was close to Doubtful Canyon where numerous Apache attacks had occurred in the 1860s and 70s, thus the name, which reflected your chances of making it through alive.

 
The ruins of the Volcano Mine tent houses and the headquarters office.

 
Mary Guess on the ore track at the Volcano Mine

   I've always loved this photo for the design and the pathos, or loneliness of the West it conveys. it has such an emotion to it. The pose is so eloquent, to me, with her hand on her shoulder. So innocent and yet elegant. Mary grew up and married Choc Hamilton and is the mother of the rodeo champion Billy Hamilton.

 
My mother Bobbi and her older sister Mary at Stein's Pass.

 
Not sure who this old timer is but he's definitely Cowboy Kin.

"Art runs parallel to nature."
—Paul Cezanne

Another Dang Van Gogh Gunfighter

December 10, 2014
   Working on a cover idea this morning, based on this sketch:

Daily Whipout: "Mickey Free Headhunter"

   And here's a variation:



   Got up this morning and finished a little study I call "Another Dang Van Gogh Gunfighter." Full disclosure, I'm reading "Lust For Life" and "Van Gogh, The Life" as research for a Classic Gunfight featuring the Dutch painter and I've got Vincent on the brain.

 
Daily Whipout: "Another Dang Vincent Van Gogh Gunfighter"

   The "Lust For Life" book is a first edition, signed by the author and is a gift from the Top Secret Writer for my birthday. Pretty dang sweet. In the preface, the author, Irving Stone, says the original manuscript was rejected in the 1930s by every leading publishing house in America (17 by his count), "always on the same grounds":

"How do you expect us to sell the story of an unknown Dutch painter to the American public in the middle of a depression."
—Short Sighted Publishers, or, should that be Blind Publishers?

The Secret to Painting

December 9, 2014
   Kathy got me a great book for my birthday: "How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life," by Russ Roberts. In it I discovered a couple things. Here they are:

• The first principal of life is that you must not fool yourself—and, remember, you are the easiest person to fool.

• You aren't as lovely as you think you are.

• We are drunks looking for our lost keys under a lamppost not because that's where we lost our keys but because that's where the light is.

• The family is a Socialist's paradise: The rent is free. The food is free. The clothes are free. All the kids are equal.

• We tried buying local once; it was called the Middle Ages.

   Over the weekend I tried to capture an old time pirate of the coastal range:

 
Daily Whipout: "Joaquin Murrietta Armed to The Teeth Sketch"

   Perhaps a tad too pirate, gave it another go yesterday:

 
Daily Whipout: "Joaquin Murrietta Armed to The Teeth, No 2"

   My good friend Kevin Mulkins gifted me an old menu from my hometown:

Lockwood's Cafe menu, front flap

Lockwood's Cafe breakfast menu: check out those crazy prices!

   Discovered an old painting and wondered aloud how I actually managed to achieve the effects therein:

 
Daily Whipout: "Dust Storm On The Horizon/ The Hunt for Delchay"

"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."
—Edgar Degas

Series B John Deere!

December 8, 2014
   Yesterday I attended the memorial for Dan O'Neil at Ed Mell's house in Paradise Valley. Ed spoke as did his son Carson. Dan was Ed's mechanic and went on 18 Copper State Road Rallies and kept Ed's cars running. He also built Ed's cabin in Prescott. Great guy.



Memorial for Dan O'Neill at Ed and Rose Marie Mell's house on Sunday

   Pretty morning today.



Moon Over Crow's Nest

   Kathy is moving into a smaller office so she is selling her green sofa. Here she is posting it on Craigslist:



Mama Selling Sofa On Craigslist

Had an good book signing at Guidon on Saturday. Sold a couple dozen books. Fun crowd. One guy brought an original Honkytonk Sue No. 1 and a first edition of "Low Blows" in very fine condition. He bought a copy of "The 66 Kid" and I signed all three.


Gordon Dudley In His Wah Maker Duds riding his Tri-mobile outside Guidon on Saturday

Ran into Joe Yager on the road to day and he told me he is halfway through the book and has found two mistakes: "Somebody said your grandpa's John Deere was a 'series D' and it's a series 'B' and that photo of you with your mother in front of a car—it's not a '39 Ford, it's a Chevy." I assured him I would reprimand the miscreant who made those mistakes.

The tractor gaff is a testament to my dyslexia and I thought I had vetted that car photo with the experts on this blog site? Anyway, it just shows we are all stupid, just on different subjects.

"I may be old, but I'm slow."
—Robert Kolbe, a book buyer at the signing and self-professed "Orgy" caterer

Getting Your Copy of The 66 Kid

December 5, 2014
   Big weekend planned. Going down to Tempe to visit some old friends:

 
Kent Danabilly and Linda Alvarezbilly at the 201 Zany Zonies show at the Arizona Historical Society in Tempe. These cats are part of the show, below:



   Also, if you need a signed copy of "The 66 Kid" for a Christmas gift, here are a couple chances to get one:




"If you see Apache sign, be careful. If you don't see Apache sign, be even more careful."
—Old Zonie Saying

A Duel Too Far?

December 5, 2014
    Got up this morning and decided I needed to take one more shot at the Kit Carson vs. Joseph Chouinard horseback duel.

 
Daily Whipout: "Kit Carson vs. Joseph Chouinard, No. 4"

   This horseback duel took place in August of 1835 at the annual trapper's rendezvous on the Green River in Wyoming. The two horses were nose to nose when both men fired at point blank range. Carson's shot struck Chouinard in the right hand, tearing off his thumb (you can see a piece of it, sent flying in the painting). The ball came out at the wrist and passed through the French-Canadian's arm above the elbow. Chouinard's horse bucked at the first report (Carson got off his shot a half-second earlier) causing the Frenchman's rifle to jerk upward; instead of hitting Carson in the heart, the bullet creased Carson's neck, under the right ear. The gun powder burned Carson's eye and singed his hair.

"Shut up, or I'll rip your guts."
—Kit Carson's retort to the big bully's claim to "take a switch and switch [all the Americans in the camp]."

The Doctor Will See You Now Takes Off

December 4, 2014
   We have had this T-shirt design for 15 years and it has always sold, but never at the level of our other Doc shirts: "I'm Your Huckleberry" being the biggest seller. However, Carole Glenn informs me that for some reason, our Doc shirt based on this image is taking off in a big way:

 
Daily Whipout: "The Doctor Will See You Now"

   Carole told me we had four orders in one day, from all parts of the country. By the way, this is a mono print, above, and we found it amongst stack of these in the inventory we purchased from Tri Star last month. Not sure why this design is suddenly catching on.

   Woke up to rain this morning. Rained on and off all night.

 
Ratcliff Ridge this morning at eight a.m.

   Worked on a sketch of an Apache medicine man this morning before I came into work:

 
Daily Whipout: "Apache Medicine Man"

   This is based on a photograph of Tony Dilje, circa 1890. He is wearing a medicine cap made of buckskin and covered with bundles of split Great Horned Owl feathers. If I ever make an Apache movie, you will see more of these headgear deals of the Apaches, so much more varied than the cliche flat, head board head wrap that everyone falls back on. On the right is the list of True West Moments I am working on this week. Need to get six in the can before I go to Thailand in less than three weeks.

   Also still noodling Van Gogh meets Doc Holliday sketches:

 
Daily Whipout: "Van Gogh Meets Doc Holliday"

   And I'm still fretting the Kit Carson horseback duel drawing. i actually did two versions yesterday during lunch. This is the first one:

 
Daily Whipout: "Kit Carson vs. Joseph Chouinard No. 2"

   I felt it was a tad too stilted and forced. Here is the original sketch:

 
Original sketch of Kit Carson horseback duel from my sketchbook.

   I am haunted by Delacroix's words (see sketchbook notation, above).

"A hasty study might be more effective and alive than the finished painting."
—Delacroix

Your Typical Van Gogh Gunfight

December 3, 2014
   Inspired by a piece in the December Vanity Fair: "Van Gogh: Suicide or Murder?" I started digging into the claims of the article. Allegedly, according to the authors, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Van Gogh was accidentally shot by a young kid who dressed up like Buffalo Bill, after having seen the Wild West showman in Paris in 1889 and strutting around Auvers-sur-Oise in his buckskins and big hat, twirling a pistol. Of course it is at Auvers-sur-Oise where Van Gogh died in 1890 and the punchline of the article is that the crazy Dutchman did not commit suicide, but was accidentally shot by the Wild West buff.

   So, naturally, I decided to do this strange episode as a Classic Gunfight. I have aped Vincent before and have long admired his quirky drawing style (fellow artist Buck Taylor has more than once referred to me as the Van Gogh of Western Art).

 
Daily Whipout: "Van Gogh Bronco"

   So now I am returning to the theme with a vengeance. Whipped these out this morning:

 
Daily Whipout: "Van Gogh Gunfighter Sketches"

"My pictures are of no value, though of course they cost me a great deal, at times even my blood and my brain."
—Vincent van Gogh

White Room, Fledgling Drummers & Tired Starlings

December 2, 2014
   It all started when fellow cartoonist and drummer Bob Steinhilber (The X-streams) visited me last month from Oregon and highly recommended I rent the movie "Beware of Mr. Baker" a documentary about a kid who got his nose broken by the legendary drummer, Ginger Baker, when the kid tried to go on the reclusive drummer's property in South Africa.

   From watching this excellent doc I was reawakened to how much I have always enjoyed Cream, so from there I rented the "Cream: Royal Albert Hall," which is the best of four reunion concerts at the venerable venue from 2005 (two discs) and as Thanksgiving Day approached I hadn't watched the second half yet. After dinner I put on the concert just as Kathy came in with the floor tom and cow bell from my drum set (chrome Ludwigs) that are stored upstairs in the studio. That led to this little Thanksgiving jam session:

Weston's More Cowbell Drum Solo

   A fire in the fireplace, Eric Clapton and Cream on the tube and a young drummer being encouraged to use "more cowbell." For Thanksgiving in the Bell house it doesn't get any better than this! Unless, of course, you count sitting on the couch and watching horses slam through the tundra on the Westerns Channel with your grandson on your lap.




"Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.

 She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings."
—White Room, sung by Eric Clapton (I always assumed Jack Bruce was the singer)

Four Deer Upstaged By A Rock

December 1, 2014
   Yesterday morning, we woke up to a treat: four deer grazing in the front yard. So we took Weston outside to take a gander at them because we knew he'd be excited:



Weston kicks and waves his arms, begging to be let down. You can see two of the deer in front of the saguaro at center, left.

   Deena wanted to know if she should put him down and I told her I thought it was safe, in spite of my reservations (ENRAGED DEER MAULS YOUG BOY!). So she set him down and off he went:



Weston takes off to go hang out with the deer. He really couldn't have been more excited.

   As he got closer, I was concerned that he might run right up to them and get trampled:



Deer to Deer: "Uh, what is that little unit approaching us at twelve o'clock?"

   But, the deer needn't have gotten alarmed because, well, little boys get easily distracted:



"Oh, look. A rock."

"I'm ADD and ADHD. Everything has to be perfect. Just not for very long."
—Little boys with little attention spans