May 5, 2010
Mark Boardman is doing our upcoming cover story on the Billy the Kid dig and what happened (it's probably the most oft asked question I get: "What the hell happened on that Billy the Kid dig?"). He and I thought it might make a cool sidebar to ask all the Billy buffs we know what questions they would ask the boy legend— assuming he was dug up and could talk— and then, utilizing the expert's knowledge of the outlaw lad, to answer the questions.

Got this back from England yesterday:

Q: Where were you born?
A: St. Louis, Missouri. Don't you guys ever check census records?

Q: What was your father's name?
A: Henri Charrière. I used to call him Papi.

Q: Who shot Sheriff Brady?
A: That German guy, Widenmann.

Q: If Dick Brewer was still alive what would you say to him?
A: Duck, Dick.

Q: Where was that tintype photo of you taken?
A: I never had my picture taken in my life.

Q: Did Morris Bernstein say anything before he died?
A: Oy veh.

Q: Just exactly what was your relationship with seventeen year old Paulita Maxwell?
A: We used to do needlework together. What are you, f***ing dumb or something?

Q: Do you think you should have got the pardon Lew Wallace promised you?
A: I got people working on that. Watch this space.
—Fred Nolan

Some of these answers are way inside jokes, but probably not far from what Billy might actually say. For example. The German guy Widenmann was in the corral the day Sheriff Brady was shot, although he later claimed to be feeding a dog when the shooting started. But Widenmann was a first class weasle so the fact that Billy, I mean Fred, would nail his ass to the barn door is just about perfect.

There's more, but I suggest you go read a book on Billy so you can laugh even more.

And, if you have a question, or two, for Billy, let's hear 'em.

"In the end, everything is a gag."
—Charlie Chaplain

May 4, 2010
I hesitate to run this work in progress at such a vulnerable place, but that's what I'm going to do. Went home for lunch and bailed into the study for Digging Up Billy the Kid.



Worried about the new head, top left. Seems too big and I don't want it to overpower the main figure. Hmmmmm. Added a couple more faces at top right and tried to get the Kid's moldy bib-front shirt, disintegrating, yet recognizable. Not sure I got it, but his left arm is dead on. Heh heh. Needs just a tad more ash and dust coming off his body as he sits up in his coffin.

Got the sketches from here:



"From ashes to ashes, from dusk to dawn. . ."
—Old Night of The Living Dead Vaquero Saying

May 4, 2010
As mentioned I attended the opening weekend of "The Second City Does Arizona, or Close, but No Saguaro," last Friday night at the Herberger Theater. A couple of memorable lines:

• Some people in Arizona are so extreme they think Dick Cheney is "too hippie."

• Where's your gun at? I must have left it at the bar.

The show runs through Sunday, May 16. Tickets right here.

I Finally Got A look at the Jonah Hex Trailer
Hey BBB, found the trailer for Jonah Hex online. Looks good!
—Mark
TW Maniac 235"

"Today a friend is someone on your Facebook profile who sort of knows someone you haven't seen in three years."
—Old Vaquero Saying

May 3, 2010
Just got this from Marshall Trimble:

"This morning at the Arizona Department of Public Safety Memorial Service I ran into an old friend, U. S. Marshal for Arizona, David Gonzales, and he told me the origin of the name 'Marshall,' is a Germanic word meaning roughly 'Keeper of the Horses.'

"I told him that was ironic because my last name comes from a Scotsman who saved the Earl of Bruce from an angry bull. Apparently he was a bulldogger. A grateful Earl of Bruce christened him 'Turn-the-Bull,' on the spot. Turn the Bull became Turnbull, then Trumbull and finally Trimble.

So it looks like I'm a 'keeper of the Horses' combined with a 'bull-thrower.'"
—Marshall Trimble

The Secret to Pulitzer Prize Winning Writing?
"Get coffee. Stare at the screen. Write a bunch of things that aren't any good. Then comes that moment when I'll say, 'That's still not any good.'"
—Dave Barry a Pulitzer-Prize-winning humor columnist

"There's a reason humans were given two ears and only one mouth."
—Old Vaquero Saying

May 3, 2010
Shifted gears on Saturday and attacked several sketches depicting Billy the Kid giving his first press conference (after being dug up):



And this:



And, of course this:



Hat and prodding microphones and cell phones and iPhones to be added later.

"Maynard Dixon sometimes did 85 sketches before he got what he wanted. I think I can do at least half that."
—BBB, The Master Procrastinator

May 3, 2010
Had a very nice weekend. At two on Saturday I gave the very first Arizona Statehood Centennial Talk at Pages Booskstore in Carefree. Had about 25 people and sold three books. From there I went to a yoga party at my neighbors across the creek. Great food and fun seeing all my yoga-mates with real clothes on. And, it was fun to see my house from their house (note to self: put on pants when going to the chicken house!).

Yesterday Kath and I had a date night and went into the Beast to see Date Night ($14 for two tickets). Really enjoyed Tina Fey and crew. I was actually glad so many critics knocked the movie because it took some of the expectation off and allowed me to enjoy the ride.

Both Saturday and Sunday I worked hard on Digging Up Billy the Kid skeletons. Did due diligence on a variety of skeleton sketches like this:



And this:



And this:



And, of course, this:



And, how about one more?



Which I whipped out this morning before I came into work. Coming up next:

"Let's try some color gouache versions of these skeletons."
—BBB, The Master Procrastinator

May 2, 2010
I love reading newspapers and magazines. They are very tactile and, of course, they are printed on paper. I make a good living from this process and, so, naturally, I am a supporter.

For the past two weeks my newspaper carrier has been delivering our Arizona Republic (and on Sunday The New York Times) later and later. One day last week it never came and I went to work without reading the paper. This was very irritating to me. I thought about calling the Republic's 800 number but decided against it because it would take a half hour and on a previous attempt I got caught in phone hell ("If you'd like to extend your subscription, but have a validated credit card, press three").

As I mentioned the other day I have a morning ritual which includes going out to the end of the driveway to get the newspaper, after I've put four pieces of whole wheat toast in the toaster. For many years, the paper(s), like clockwork, have been there at 5:30. But for the past two weeks it has been 7:30 and later.

Today, I got up at six. I was excited because my Nazi Westerns True West Moment was running in the Valley & State section of the Republic and I wanted to see how it came out (I'm so much more shallow than I let on). I walked to the end of the driveway and it wasn't there. I went back in and finished my ten minutes of drawings, fed the chickens, took my pills, checked my email, finished a Time magazine, read a long piece in the New Yorker about a murder trial and was on my walk with Peaches when I saw a battered van coming down our remote road. I watched it go by, then saw someone throw a paper out the window and although I hadn't seen this van before, I knew the deal. It was 9:40 in the morning. I kept walking but slowed down to wait for them to come back up the road (we live on a dead end). Flagging them down, I walked up to the window and said, "May I ask why the paper is so late?"

Two people were inside. A driver, a guy about my age with a dirty white t-shirt was driving. The carrier, a woman who I recognized had on a biker cap and was smoking a cigarette. From the driver, I got a defensive "We didn't get the paper until three."

Okay. That was over six hours ago, and. . .

The carrier gives me this deadpan look: "We had to wrap 400 papers with an extra section, but you'll be happy to know it's real thick."

Like this would make up for the paper being four hours late. I also got a song and dance about car trouble. I let it slide. They motored on.

It's hard to be mad at them, no doubt they make minimum wage, or something close, but the fact remains they are the vulnerable edge of the ancient delivery system newspapers exist on. I wondered if the editors at the paper had a clue how close they were to losing another subscription? Virtually all of the news from the Republic is online, for free.

A tipping point reached? Not yet, but I realize I'm headed in that direction. I saw my first iPad in Laughlin a couple weeks ago and the access to papers is great. My kids are already there and virtually all of the young people who work for me can't remember the last time they bought or read a newspaper. I walked back and got the two papers and took them in the kitchen. I was in a bad mood. But then I got a good laugh.

Ironically, this quote was in the New York Times:

"Younger people don't want to touch a piece of paper. They want to do it all electronically."
—Wayne Abernathy, of the American Bankers Association, describing how kids today don't want to write checks, or even use cash. They want to pay for everything with their cell phones.

April 30, 2010
It was a week ago today that I spent the day in a procrastination seminar. It cost my wife $185 ("Money well spent," she told me). So, to save you $185, here are the four main things I got out of it:

• Ask yourself this question: What do I need to stop doing and start doing in order to succeed? (I told this to a photographer I know and he said, "Well, I guess I need to stop looking at porn and actually start doing something.")

• For ten minutes every day do something you need to start doing but don't want to do. (for me it was forcing myself to draw narrative—boxes and word balloons before I check email in the morning).

• Start where you are: prioritizing is a skill that can be learned (the most important thing I learned is to try and delineate between what to pay attention to and what to ignore, or avoid).

• Task initiation: the ability to begin a task without undue procrastination (thanks to this prod I actually bailed into the Digging Up Billy cover sketches, something I have been putting off for a long time).

I have a ritual in the morning: I eat half a banana and drink a half cup of coffee, go out to the kitchen and put in four slices of toast (two for me, two for Kath), then go out to the end of the driveway and bring back the newspaper (I hate when it's late!), come back, butter the toast (with that non-butter stuff), read the paper, make notes in daytimer, take heart pills, feed the chickens, go for a brisk walk with Peaches, come back and check email.

Of course, by the time I do all of this, it's time to go into the office. So, day after day, I find myself doing everything but the one thing I need to do more of to be successful: draw and paint!

So, I still do the same morning regimen, but I put in ten minutes of sketching after the walk and before email. It was very hard the first day (it's hard work!), but I timed it and made it ten minutes. The next day you add 15 seconds, etc.

For the past seven days I have not missed a day and I feel good. Why?

Ol' Roux is gonna tell you why. . .

"To know one's self is the true; to strive with one's self is the good; to conquer one's self is the beautiful."
—Joseph Roux

April 29, 2010
Worked last night on sketches for the Digging Up Billy the Kid cover illustration. I have great reference—thanks to Robert Ray—of a dead guy sitting up in his coffin and giving his first press conference:



That, and the other photos led me to here:



And here:



I like the idea of "Billy the Kid's First Press Conference" as if he has been unearthed, he sits up and starts answering questions: "I always liked Pat Garrett, but I didn't appreciate the way he dropped me while my pants were down. That's just not good business."

"Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves."
—Rudyard Kipling

Plus, A Bonus Quote:


"He who cannot dance claims the floor is uneven."
—Old Vaquero Saying

April 28, 2010
I think it's safe to say, that this will be a first. This coming Saturday we are going to start the Kick Off Party for Arizona's Statehood Centennial: 1912-2012. I am going to start this party at Pages Bookstore in Carefree. Here's the inside skinny from Pages:

Bob Boze Bell will entertain you at 2 p.m. with stories of the West and his own zany kick-off to the 2012 Arizona centennial celebration.

Seating is limited, RSVP's are suggested. Call Pages bookstore in Cave Creek's Stagecoach Village at 480-575-7220 or email info@PagesNewAndRare.com.

When the next centennial roles around, you can tell everyone you were at the very first party at the last centennial. Imagine the prestige (well, that and the fact that you will be 140 years old).



"Come celebrate 100 years of hilarity."
—BBB

April 28, 2010
One of the advantages of almost dying is being able to mock up that look when needed. Case in point: I needed a good model to help me create a cover concept of Billy the Kid, freshly dug up and holding a press conference.

Robert Ray took this half dead model out in the back, behind our office and shot off a dozen shots. This is the best dead head look of the bunch, not very flattering, but definitely half dead:



Believe it or not, that shirt is a gift from Jim Larkin of New Times-Village Voice Media fame who wore it for several years then gifted it to me as a prop shirt. It's the closest shirt I have to the famous anchor bib shirt the Kid has on in his only known photo.


This reference shot led to this sketch:



Of course, this isn't our first digging up Billy cover. The first was about six years ago when the dig was first hatched and landed on the front page of the New York Times. This was my take of Dead Billy at that time:



This cover did very well for us, and I personally sat in a Barnes & Noble in New York City and watched three of them picked up and bought right off the newsstand.


"You will live and you will die. Both are good."
—Old Vaquero Saying

April 28, 2010
Got this in this morning from Chalfont St. Giles, Britain:

"Bob ~ Something happen to your blog? -- it hasn't been updated for yonks, while your posts are available on the 'Community' section of the TW website. No sweat, but I can't believe I'm the only one who noticed this. Incidentally, and I quote you ["take the anchor, out in a small boat and plant the sucker on the far side of the sand bar, take out the slack with a wench, and then hand crank the boat over!"]. I am lost in admiration of the versatility and physical capabilities of those Gila boatmen -- enjoying a sex break and hauling themselves over a sandbank at the same time!"
—Fred Nolan

Yes, on April 14 we migrated my blog archives (some 2,900 posts) over to a new address because the site we were on apparently was going away. When we did this, something happened on the BBB Blog address bar and it stopped showing new posts. You guessed correctly, Fred, I have had numerous emails basically saying the same thing. As I understand it (and I really don't get why this happened) you need to refresh your link. Even though it's the same address, you need to go in via the following address and when you see the new posts, save the address on your favorites as Wayne Rutschman has done here:

http://blog.truewestmagazine.com/

"Yes I clicked on the address and brought up the new site. I then added that site to my favorites and told it to overwrite the old favorites address. Works fine now. Thanks for saving me the time to check the obits with your prompt reply."
—Wayne

And, as for the wench usage, yes, indeed I did mean they used a loose woman to make it over troublesome sandbars. They weren't so good, though, when it came to docking. Don't know why.

"Doh!"
—Homer Simpson

April 27, 2010
Went home for lunch and looked through my stack of 10,000 Bad Drawings sketchbooks and found this page of roughs from March 7, 2007:



This was right after Paul Hutton and I joined Bob Brink in New York to attend the annual New York Comic Con in February of 2007. No doubt inspired (or infected) by the mucho macho Manga comics I saw there, I whipped out this John The Baptist dangling head sketch (bottom, right).

Today, I saw it with new eyes and wondered if I could marry that dramatic sketch with a clip photo I have been saving of troops in Afghanistan enduring a sandstorm. I had to be back in the office at two for a design meeting, so I was under the gun, or under the knife, as it were. Did this in about 40 minutes. Here is the result:



Pretty dramatic, no? Need to work on the dangling head a bit, but the swirling dust effects are right on the money.

"The world is full of men who spend their lives fleeing from something that doesn't pursue them."
—Old Vaquero Saying

April 27, 2010
Thanks to the Googling expertese of Meghan Saar, I finally located Richard Lingenfelter, the author of "Steamboats on the Colorado". He lives in San Diego and on the phone answered a critical question for me about one of the techniques that the early Steamboat pilots used to get over sandbars. When these intrepid men, like Jack Mellon, would encounter a sandbar they had several methods for getting over them (all they needed was two inches of water!). According to Richard, if they failed to crawdaddy over (with poles and maneuvering), they would turn the big boat around and reverse the paddle wheel and chew through the sandbar, and if that failed they would take the anchor, out in a small boat and plant the sucker on the far side of the sand bar, take out the slack with a wench, and then hand crank the boat over! Just incredible stuff. And, I have never seen this portrayed in a movie. Have you?

Speaking of steamboat movies, over the weekend I whipped out a small master shot of the Colorado River in flood stage, late in the afternoon with steam rising off the water and a Steamboat, The Gila, chugging along (lower, center).



As the camera glides downward we hear Mojave In-din chants and maraca rhythms, oh and very loud cicadas. Got to have loud cicadas.

Oh, and one more thing: when we were in Laughlin two weekends ago for the history conference I saw an ad for a John Fogerty concert and the price was $139.95, plus tax! Per ticket! I went up to the room and said to Kathy, "How much would you pay to see John Fogerty?" And she said, "$15." Later, I was cruising around Laughlin and I saw a marquee advertising for a Credence Clearwater Revival Tribute Band called Fandango. Tickets were $19. Still four dollars too high for Kath. Me, I would have gladly paid $65 (to see Fogerty) if I could watch the show in a barca lounger and the hotel staff promised to wheel me out and up to my room by 9:30.

But that's just me still being wild and crazy.

"Left a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day."
—Proud Mary, Credence Clearwater Revival

April, 27, 2010
As I mentioned yesterday, we received a ten page letter from Belgium raving about Johnny Boggs' current column on "The Ten Best Westerns You've Never Heard of."

Here is one of the pages from Peter Stadlbaur of Maubray, Belgium:



Johnny picked "Fort Massacre" (the title loosely in German, above) as his number two pick. Peter says in his letter, "Great! I missed this movie when it came out in 1958 and was looking for it desperately—until it was shown just lately on a German TV Channel (in German) and I loved it. Never before or after Joel McCrea was meaner and tougher as he was in 'Fort Massacre.' Besides: JOel McCrea is my favourite Western actor.The film was grim—the characters without any illusion—'The Naked and the Dead'—style. Again: Great! I am now looking forward to watching this film in the original U.S. version and in a regular movie theatre (again)."


Here's Johnny article


"I hope more of this kind to come. "
—Peter Stadlbaur

April 26, 2010
Here are a couple photos from my art class last weekend. My first class at Vision Gallery showed up at ten. Here they are getting ready to draw:



The kid with the quick wit, John, is fifth from the left front. All of them were quite willing to bail in, especially when I told them to take off their shoes and draw with their toes.

Toes Were The Days





By the way, check out his drawings—very strong lines. I told him he was already drawing at a high school level (and I meant it). I told them their job is to get an agent and sell these drawings for thousands of dollars so their parents will never have to work again. As you can see, some of the parents are sitting behind the kids and this got a big laugh.


"Do as I say, not as I do!"
—BBB, reacting to little John nailing me about looking at my drawing

April 26, 2010
One of the benefits of living on the high Sonoran Desert is looking out the front window and seeing some pretty spectacular clouds. For example, this is right out my kitchen window (although I did run out and shoot it from the driveway):



That's Ratcliff Ridge in the foreground, studded with a high stand of saguaros. Meanwhile, the desert itself is blooming all over the place. When I shot this cloud scene I merely turned to the left and got this shot of our wild little succulents blooming a bright red:



Inspired I went right into the studio, looked through my discard pile, found a reject and tweaked it here and overpainted there, and ended up with this:



This is a scene I have planned for Mickey Free and his ride into Mexico where he discovers sporadic fires burning languidly across the plains, and as the clouds of smoke climb into the sky they mingle with the atmospheric clouds until one can't tell the difference.


"I see clouds in dead people's eyes."
—The Sixth Sense Kid on acid

April 25, 2010
I'm relatively new to the art teaching profession, having taught my first real class of students in February at the Orme Ranch School. Yesterday I had the privilege of teaching two classes of about 20 kids in each class at the Vision Gallery, which is on the west side of the old-town plaza in Chandler. It's part of a program for the Chandler Center for the Arts and since schools are cutting out art from the cirriculum these kinds of seminars are taking up the slack.

I was a tad nervous about the class because when I taught the high schoolers at Orme it was a challenge to keep them engaged, off of Twitter, Facebook, iPods and each other, but these kids (6 to 12 years old) were an absolute dream. First of all, they would hang on every word I said, and take everything I told them totally to heart:

"Okay, look up here, don't look at your drawing, draw what you see, not what you think you see, come on, don't look, I know you want to, that's your left-brain trying to control you, look up here at what you are drawing. . ."

So, when one of the kids later wanted me to show them facial spacing (how you line up eyes with mouth, ears to eyes, etc.) I started drawing on a pad on an easel and John, a precocious lad of about seven or eight, says, "stop looking at your drawing Mr. Bell." He wasn't being a smartass, or cheap in any way. He had taken my edict to heart and was feeding it back to me.

Of course, I had them draw with their opposite hand and then their toes. The kids squealed when i told them what I wanted and I told them they didn't have to do it if they didn't want to, but the ones who squirmed the loudest and said they would never do it were the ones who dived right in and seemed to enjoy it the most.

When I raved about their wild lines and how much integrity their drawings had, you could see the lightbulbs go off and it was quite inspiring to see. I told them I was unlocking a secret weapon, like a super power and how it was going to give them an advantage over their friends who think art is scanning a piece of art into a computer and coloring it with an application and a mousepad. That's not art, I told them, what you are doing is art.

After I sold them on the super power idea I told them their assignment was to go out into the world and get on the ladder, but I warned them that there will be 300 other kids lined up around that ladder waiting to get on, and it's your job to figure out how to get around those others and get on that ladder.

At the end of the class, John (yes, the same feisty kid) came up to me and said, "I'm going to get on that ladder." I later learned his father is terminally ill and the confidence of that boy took my breath away. Nobody is going to stop him.

Speaking of kids, when I think about my own children I often pride myself on the fact that I treated both my son and my daughter exactly the same, without favoritism. However, and this is hard to admit, when it comes to dating. . .

"I believe nobody is good enough for my daughter and everybody is too good for my son."
—BBB

April 22, 2010
Lots of talk in Arizona about a tough new immigration bill our governor is considering signing. Very contentious on both sides and to hear them talk you'd think this is something we have never faced before.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Case in point:

Wanted! More Unwanted Immigrants



"For every thing you gain, you will lose something. And for everything you lose, you will gain something."
—Old Vaquero Saying

April 22, 2010
Everybody, I mean everybody, has forwarded me the news about the O.K. Corral inquest papers being found. Unfortunately, the reports make it seem as if these have been missing since 1881, but that is not the case.

Here is Mark Boardman's take on the find:

"Just to be clear--this is the Coroner's Inquest, done the same day as the Street Fight. It is not the trial inquest (the so-called Earp Hearing). The originals of that are still missing.

"I'm trying to find out just how long the Coroner's Inquest papers have been around--a couple of years at least, according to some friends.

"I believe these are the originals. They were misplaced in the '60s and later found in Bisbee.

"There is no real new info in the 'find.' Lord knows how many copies were made before they were lost. They're quoted in many places."
—Mark Boardman

"Three men hurled into eternity in the duration of a moment."
—Headline from Tombstone Epitaph, October 27, 1881