You know, I saw Robert Duval on a lot of peoples best top ten cowboys list. Now I liked him as the revengeful bounty hunter in Joe Kidd. And of course we all remember him as Ned Pepper in True Grit. He was in a few other westerns as well. But I remember him from Sling Blade as the crazy, uncaring father and of course as the Consigliari (sp) in the Godfather.

My favorite cowboy is, big surprise, John Wayne. You could say I've got a hard-on for him. (Metaphorically speaking, of course). I like the guy so much I had to do a quick sketch of him to glorify our, I mean my, love. He really cant be beat on the screen.

I love this months cover photo. It is a photo by Scott Baxter of Casey Murphy. I think Scott really captured the emotion and feel of his subject. Now that I look, I see it is actually the June/July edition. I guess the good news is that I have the current edition available to me as soon as I can get to the newsstand. Yes it's true, all the bookstores around here have closed as well.

Here's a little sketch. Took two hours that meant to free up my style and allow for quicker representations. As usual, graphite on board. I don't know how I got this photo from my camera to computer, to photo program, to this blog entry. But, somewhere along the way it took on the profile of spam, or so said the warning when I tried to upload. No spam here.

Just to set the record straight, I did finish the John Wayne drawing I posted earlier. I figured you figured I did but I still needed to post the complete image to square things up with the ethisphere. I cant have some internet archaeologist searching the web in the future and find an unfinished work.

Here is my latest piece which I entered in the American Plains Artist competition. It is of a an artisan I met at The Cowboy Fest in Santa Clarita, Calif. last month. I entered two other works for their consideration. They have quite an extensive prize pool, but my real motivation is the head judge is Robert Shufelt. He is the go to guy for western pencil art. And my hero.