Mick and Hoppa in Texas

I'll be posting some cartoons here about the Alamo but the first one is Mick and Hoppa's encounter with Indians. As usual Mick and Hoppa follow my hitchhiking bicycle trip some seventeen years ago, although, unlike them I did not have to dodge any arrows.

I also visited the real Alamo, or what is left of it in Sa Antonio. I noticed a lot of young 'gangsta' types with the ridiculous fashion of wearing their jeans half way down their buttocks. I made a couple of mistakes there, one being chaining my bike to the enclosing fence around the Alamo and the other was wearing my hat into the monument, Obviously the Alamo is a great monument to Texan freedom. I don't think anything can really detract from the heroism of the men who gave their lives there. They were fighting a dictator and fighting for their rights. However, revisionist historians do point out that some of them were slave holders and so on. The ancient Athenians were also slave owners but they gave us some of our cherished ideas about democracy so nothing is ever totally black and white. One thing is sure - those men in the Alamo did not have to remain there to face an overwhelming force in order to uphold what they believed in.

 

 

 

Arizona Wildlife Museum

 

 

My Old Life Drawing Nudes

My daughter found my folder of drawings from some seventeen years ago and was so impressed that she photographed some of them. I did some hobby classes and also had a few people model for me on the beach. I did quite a lot of quick sketches of a few minutes and worked them up later. You can see I liked Bret Whitely and also the Fauves. Apologies to Michelangelo for my version of God breathing life into a hominid Adam!

 

 

 

 

Mick , the Gazer

Mickand Hoppa in Arizona

 

 

Seventeen years ago I was riding my bike through the desert of Arizona when I really did meet a nurse called Sue and watched a sunset, She wasn't really a 'cowgirl' but I thought it looked good in the cartoon. There wasn't really a talking kangaroo either really, except in my head...... 

Mick and Hoppa in California

Cat paintings

Kimba the cat: I just started experimenting with water colours. This s a picture of friend Helen's cat Kimba. Painting a white subject seems limited until you look at the shadows that make up the 'whiteness'.