Bob Boze Bell Art Blog

May 30, 2009
I keep playing with storm clouds for the Mickey Free story. Here is a study I whipped out this morning:

As Mickey rode south on the trail of the Apache Kid, the storm clouds rooted themselves in the scorched earth and the molten ground spit it right back into the sky. Meanwhile, Mickey encounters numerous fires burning up the draws and along the ridgelines south of Fronteras. The smoke and the clouds intermingle until they become inseparable:

I wonder if Mickey ever catches the Kid? Perhaps Tolstoy has a comment on that front?

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”
—Leo Tolstoy

May 29, 2009
Twenty years ago I took a drawing class from legendary comic strip artist Burne Hogarth. I learned a ton on anatomy and rendering from the guy who did Tarzan for the newspaper comics and created Drago. This was at the Scottsdale Artist’s School where they bring in the best artists in the country and you study with them for a week. Yesterday I got out his 1972 Tarzan of the Apes graphic novel to study his linework. I was taken with his rendering of an old man’s head:

Then I returned to my sepia studies:

I really like the richness of the sepia washes and I want to expand this for the Mickey Free book. By the way, I’m about ten days from 9,000 sketches and I have to say that as I approach that milestone I have definitely picked up my game. As a point of reference, here’s what I was doing a year ago:

And, here’s the next day’s sketches:

Very close to what I’m doing now, but I do sense a smidgen of progress. Now to start that second big painting on Billy and Pat Garrett. Gee, I wonder what ol’ Diebenkorn has to say about this?

“When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling. But it happens very rarely; usually it’s agony. I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It’s the invisible enemy.”
—Richard Diebenkorn

May 28, 2009
The producer of the PBS series American Experience, Rob Rapley, sent me a low res version of the sunset time lapse film which will probably be used in the Wyatt Earp show they are currently working on. Here it is:

Tombstone Sunset.mov

Pretty cool. He wanted ominous and he got it. This was shot on a still camera, hooked up to a Mac hard drive and clicking off three shots per second. It’s all on the computer. Amazing.

The first sequence (see map on yesterday’s post) had a jerky quality and Rob speculated the hard drive wasn’t processing the photos fast enough and was dropping one or two images here and there. By the end of the day Rob had all the bugs worked out and it moves seamlessly.

Tweaked the Big Billy this morning. Kathy thinks there are problems with the hands and a certain face (Billy’s). May keep working on it until I ruin it. Ha.

“Almost nothing works the first time it’s attempted. Just because what you’re doing does not seem to be working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity.”
—Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy

May 27, 2009
Went home for lunch and finished another Mickey Free study on traversing the Salt River Canyon:

I may change Powhatan to Remington, since the latter would be the one stopping to gawk at the scenery.

Note to self: do not mention guns in the magazine without running it by the Gun Guys!

Here’s Hickok expert Joe Rosa on our “Photos Don’t Lie” feature in the current issue:

I found your feature on “Photos Don’t Lie!” of interest but am not convinced by the photograph of the above gentleman.

Some years back I discussed pistol shooting in killing situations with some deputy U. S. Marshals in Kansas and more recently with a friend in Kansas who is a crack shot. I had mentioned the sometimes hysterically funny antics of t.v. cops and CSI types when carrying pistols thrust out in front heald two-handed and seemingly unable to turn corners, open doors and what have you.

It was pointed out that the two-handed style came in more recently because of the recoil from modern ammunition that was not experienced in the Old West.

As for your sheriff, from my own experience firing cap and ball Colt’s pistols and Peacemakers, one did not get in line with the cylinder because of the risk of flash and burning powder from the join between the cylinder and the breech end of the barrel. Therefore, the way he is holding the pistols, with no chance of properly sighting it and running the risk of burns from flash or the barrel convinces me that it is a posed picture and nothing more.

Certainly, I am sure that at times some people held pistols two handed but away from flash!

—Joe Rosa

And, for good measure, here’s our resident Gun Guy:

I agree with you that a two-hand hold was occasionally used, but in the caption you state that the photo “…makes us question how early it was that shooters gravitated to this two-handed grip.”

When you say this two handed grip, it infers a grip exactly like that shown. Believe me, nobody is going to fire a revolver with the hand in front of the cylinder.

That’s why I think he was clowning around or possibly listening to instructions from a non-gun-savvy photographer.

Working in as many films as I have, I know they are always suggesting the actor/photo subject do something they think is cool, but is really ridiculous.

Photos don’t lie, but they don’t always tell the whole story either.

—Phil

End of comments. Gee, I wonder what ol’ Gelb has to say about all this?

“Over-seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureaucratic thinking. People who are seriously committed to mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up.”
—Michael J. Gelb

May 27, 2009
Last Friday morning I accompanied PBS producer Rob Rapley and cameraman Michael Chin on a visual shooting tour of Cochise County. Through email we had narrowed down the route predicated on how much we could see in one day. That eliminated Animas and Sulpher Srings Valley (John Ringo’s grave, etc.), and most points east of Tombstone.

However, on Friday morning we woke up record rain in the Tucson area and it looked doubtful whether we would get anything to shoot. We took off from the Radisson Resort at seven anyway, and waded across Kolb Road to the I-10.

Here is the route we took:

View PBS Tour in a larger map

When we took the Vail exit and headed south towards Sonoita, the sky looked like this:

But as we topped out on the ridgeline we saw the clouds breaking over the Whetstone Mountains and we stopped for our first shots:

Michael Chin, the cinematographer from San Francisco, was using a 16mm high def film camera (his own, by the way) to get a richer look for the American Experience show on Wyatt Earp:

Meanwhile, producer Rob Rapley set up a still camera hooked directly into his Mac laptop hard drive that would process three frames a second to capture the dramatic cloud movements:

The sun started to break through the clouds and we got some very dramatic stuff:

Like this:

From the divide we drove into Sonoita and got snacks, then headed towards Cottonwood Springs. Much to my surprise, they didn’t like the lighting at the entrance to the Earp-Curly Bill fight location (photographers hate the middle of the day for shooting. Most of the shadows are gone, blown out, too harsh. They prefer early morning and late afternoon.), so we moved on to Sierra Vista, took the bypass, north of town and headed down the road towards Bisbee. About half way out, I told them we were looking towards Lewis Springs on the San Pedro, which is where the Clanton Ranch was. The clouds were breaking nicely, so we turned around and went a short ways down a power road to take images of the Tombstone Hills, Charleston and Lewis Springs:

We got rained on here:

We’re looking across the San Pedro towards Tombstone. the Tombstone Hills are in shadow. From here we drove to Bisbee and tried to find a good A-frame mining hoist. There were several in Warren, south of Bisbee, but they were modern, metal ones. The best one was behind the cemetery and we couldn’t figure out how to get around the graveyard (it is huge!), so we ended up going to the north end of the “resting place” and shooting over the fence:

After we got this shot, we had a great lunch in the Breakfast Club. Place was slammed with locals, so the economy can’t be doing that bad down there.

We got to Tombstone about 2:30 and decided not to shoot anything there. Rob wanted a clear shot of the Dragoons, but it soon became evident there were too many new homes dotting the landscape to the north of town. I remembered Middlemarch Road which you access west of town and so we drove out there and went quite a ways on the dirt road until we cleared most of the houses. This is the view south, back towards Tombstone, with all of the damn new houses in the way (sorry Sherry).

And this is the view shooting north:

It’s still not a clean shot. There are still houses out there, but Michael and Rob gerrymandered creosote bushes and gullys between them to try and get rid of them.

Coming next: A spectacular sunset over the Whetstones.

May 26, 2009
Went home for lunch and finished the second version of “Friend Or Foe”:

As I mentioned this morning, this one is more of a dusk scene. I also pumped up the foreground ridges with dark, volcanic rock. I love how totally different rock formations, collide out on the desert (wish I would have paid more attention in Geology!).

And for reference, here’s the first one:

Robert Ray just taught me a step to add to the scanning process to tweak the color a bit. I noticed the first scan, posted this morning, had lost some color nuance. Still, although I like the effects in the first one, I think I have to go with the fading light image. It’s more moody and dramatic, no?

I’m working on another scene of Powhatan Clarke’s crew and Remington traversing the Salt River Canyon on their way to Fort Apache. Here’s the study:

And I also worked over the long weekend on sepia style storyboarding:

I might use this for flashbacks, or maybe, even go in and out of it, as if we are getting different media versions of Remington’s sketchbooks.

I also photographed the big Billy oil, but couldn’t get a clean shot of it. It’s still drying and I couldn’t get an angle that killed the glare. I’ll try again later.

Robert Ray is developing a new Google custom map deal he learned at a seminar last Friday to illustrate my PBS wanderings. We hope to have that ready, along with the dramatic photos, tomorrow.

“Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”
—Gilda Radner

May 26, 2009
Here’s the sketch of Powhatten Clarke that I whipped out last year:

This is based on a photograph of the young Lieutenant when he was based at San Carlos. Remington featured Clarke in several paintings, such as “Arrival of A Courier.”

Powhatan died tragically before he could leave his mark on the army or the world.

“Funny how an obituary doesn’t interest a dead man.”
—Frederic Remginton

May 16, 2009
Finally, finished the big Billy oil painting yesterday. Not sure it’s good enough. Going to let it dry and take another look. Kathy is recommending I start another one.

Also worked on a sequence for Mickey Free called “Friend Or Foe?”:

There is a point when you cross a wide valley where you have committed to the crossing and when you get to the middle you are the most vulnerable to attack since you are so exposed. And, when you see the dust coming, you don’t know if it’s friend or foe. In this case, it’s both. These are Rurales and they round up Mickey Free and intend to hang him. There is only one problem: there are no trees for miles, so a Mexico City Major riding with the Rurales decides to just shoot the “gringo”.

I have another version of this scene, with dusk descending on the foreground which I’ll finish at lunch and post here.

Meanwhile, my 10 sketches have evolved into this:

Loose washes overlaid with red and brown penwork. Very rococo. I sure have low self-esteem about these images. Gee, I wonder what a standup guy has to say about this?

“I’m a great believer in low self-esteem. The only people I find that have high self-esteem are criminals and actors. And if you have low self-esteem and you always assume you’re the dumbest person in the room, you’ll work harder.”
—Jay Leno

May 23, 2009
Back from Tucson this morning. Taped a talking head segment for a Wyatt Earp segment for PBS at Luna Studios on east Speedway. On Friday I acted as the producer’s guide and showed them the main geographic locations in Cochise County. It rained all night on Thursday, so it looked rather thin for shooting anything on Friday, but as we topped the divide on the way to Sonoita, the clouds broke over the Whetstones and we had spectacular scenery for the rest of the day. I’ll post some of my photos of them shooting, later.

On the way down on Thursday I met Wayne Rutschman at Molino’s Midway for a Mexican food lunch (he brought my daytimer, which I had inadverdantly left at his cabin last weekend). We yucked it up pretty good. Had the lunch special, two enchiladas (I bought: $22 cash).

Many memories on Speedway: the Doll House, the Embers, The Cedars, the Poco Loco, the Hi-Ho Club and the Dunes. All nightclubs I played in, or frequented in the sixties. Also went by the Branding Iron, the Long Branch and the Hayloft, all clubs I played in during the seventies when I was in my honkytonk phase. None of the clubs mentioned still exist, although several are still bars with different names. The Dunes and the Longbranch are both “Gentleman Clubs.” I contemplated going inside to see if I could recognize the electrical outlets (The Hayloft door was open this morning) but I blew by there and decided there was nothing to see in those old haunts but disappointment.

Of course what we all want to happen is what actually happened to me one time, when I returned to Tucson after an absence of about five years. This was in the seventies. I went into Lloyd’s, a little joint on Sixth Street, where all the Kingman kids went for Mexican food, and as I sat down, Charlotte, the lone waitress, walked by and said, “Hi Hon, the usual?”

That’s the dream of nostalgia, but unfortunately, it’s the exception to everything. And that’s what makes it such an exceptional memory (hers and mine).

“If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.”
—Thomas J. Watson Sr.

May 20, 2009
Blew off weight training this morning to come into the office and fix the Ira Aten Classic Gunfight. I swapped out two images, took out the offending paragraph, replaced it with Mark Boardman’s original copy, created a sidebar below the illustration, gave it a sidebar box and ID it as a “fascinating sidebar” to the fight. Meghan tweaked the syntax and the layout and we turned it over to Robert Ray who schmoozed it to the finish. Feels good. As I told Mark, I feel like I get to have my enchilada and eat it too.

Still cloudy and overcast. Experimenting with more color in my daily sketches:

Here’s my first sketch on the Ira Aten fight:

But it struck me as too staid and typical. Glad I went with the Andrew McClelland image with the two guns blazing. After a day of realism I was in the mood for experimentation on my 8 remaining sketches:

Meanwhile, here’s what I was sketching a year ago:

Really like that Spanish Dagger in the center. The little boy and portrait are from the cover of Ten Cent Plague, the book about comics being banned in the fifties. And here’s what I was doing ten years ago:

Ten Years Ago Today

May 20, 1999
Need to go into Phoenix today and do some cover work on Bad Men [book]. Not looking forward to drive.

• Fixed cover

• Redid Black Bart map

• Redid U.S. Map—into outlaw hideout map

• Redid Northfield-Medelia map

• Fixed silver dollar entry

• Made corrections in sections I-II-III-V-VI

Dropped off True West [financial] facts and figures to Jim [Tri Star accountant]

[then on May 27 I wrote: "My Bad Men book seems rather weak as I proof it, but I can't decide if it's because I'm sick of the whole thing, or not. Exasperating."]

[On June 3, Jim, the Tri Star accountant, recommended not buying True West magazine. He walked me through the numbers pointing out that their net income for 1998 was at $90,000, while their salaries were at $132,000. "They have nothing to sell you," Jim said.]

And believe it or not, it gets worse. Wait until you see what the editor of Arizona Highways has to say about buying True West, plus Bob McCubbin’s accountant also weighs in. Bet you can guess what he says. Ha.

“It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future date.”
—Seneca