New Extreme Realism Drawing Video

The drawing of Harmony Marlin. Over five hours on three DVDs.

Harmony Marlin I, II, and III on DVD or AVOD from Amazon.com

A New Portrait and a New Video to go with it... after a Ten Year Hiatus

Okay, I have decided to do yet another portrait on video, taking into account that EACH AND EVERY mark I make be filmed on camera, the entire time.  So I have started a new project and am making great progress. It has been ten years since I did the drawing of a reenactor playing General Lee at the Avenel House, entitled "THE LIVING GENERAL." Time to do another one!

First Snow on Tom Cat Ridge

Three Acres Plantation - Historical Period Porch Completion

Three Acres Plantation recently saw the completion of the original porch work, dating back to at least 2013. The wood is all in place and awaiting the Spring of the year to complete the staining and the final painting of the wrought iron work. The Alpine Revival styling was George's favorite period type of architecture, and he used it throughout the front porch.












Here we see the completion of the Grand Staircase, lacking only final paint and stain work.





The view looking West North West of the home, towards the property of his parents, here on Tom Cat Ridge.




The period 5.0 Mustang in the background is the original 1992 Fox Body V8 LX 5.0 High Output with the PEP package and the GT wheels in bimini blue and with the titanium interior. It is original to the property here at Three Acres Plantation. Behind the car is George's field that he called the Moor, and then his brother's property.

Three Acres Plantation Restoration Project 2012

Work continues here at Three Acres Plantation, and so far, right on schedule. Recently discovered architectural drawings of the home have allowed workmen to restore the home to its original lustre, dated back to a period about 2011-2012 A.D., or thereabouts. This is definitely a time when George Roland Wills was known to have owned the home, and some time before his institute would be built, and the remainder of his major works would be completed. The railing is of course known to have been in the early Alpine Revival style, with hand-tooled and hand-fitted sections throughout.

George spent much of that Winter writing, and teaching, as history informs us. He had released a number of books to the public by this time, and one or two of his films had also been completed and released in the year 2011, despite the restrictions that the lack of travel had placed upon his newest projects.



"I find that I do my best work late at night, when all is at its quietest." - GRW, from his diaries and collected journals.




"The water here is the purest to be found anywhere on earth. Here, in the country, where I keep a few books, videos, and some music. Bring others with me, from time to time... " - GRW - from his BOOK OF DAYS.





"I find a great energy in being invited to teach, once again. It rekindles the desire for knowledge, and once again stirs the embers of the mind to an urge for even greater knowledge.." - GRW - Journals and collected sayings.





"When finished, it will be the finest dwelling house in the state, maybe in the entire country. It will be admirably suited to my simple wants, and needs." -Book of Quotations.

36 Years Later

Well, this last week has been an extremely interesting experience for me. I got to go back into a building that I had not set foot in since 1975. 36 years it has been for me. This great old middle school, where I pulled five years, from 3rd grade to 7th grade. Still quite a child in those days, and not yet ready to go to BEC and the one grade they had there; the 8th grade, nor wonder why that 8th grade was all by itself; neither yet high school nor any longer a children's school, like this one...

This particular school started out as Bedford High School, then became an elementary school, and finally, it is a middle school. Thus, in its vast career, it has housed students from the 3rd grade all the way to 12th grade graduation.


The school is one of those massive three story ancient brick affairs, with an actual full size Greek revival front entrance, worthy of any Grecian city-state. I recall reading somewhere that each of those tiny square pegs that you see in the photograph is actually a representation of the ends of great wooden beams that used to support these massive isosceles triangular rooftops. These exposed wooden beams were not needed on this modern -day building from the 1900's, they are not the ends of great pieces of lumber holding up anything; they are instead just decorations, representing the real small square ends of great lumber as they would have appeared on the actual grecian temples... Yet, there they are. Truly, we worship the ruined without reason!

I remember being smaller, much smaller, and actually growing taller year after year as I attended this school. I remember my third grade classes and how small I was, then. How big my winter coat felt, and how it was almost a space suit to get on and off. I remember the first time we used small lined notebook paper, and real ink pens! No more stupid first and second grade CANT ROLL crayons (large tubed crayons with a flat side, so they would not go rolling off the desks and which were about as subtle, artistically, as a chainsaw in surgery). No, we had real pointed Crayolas and real things to color.



An eighth grade picture of me at football practice at BEC, with Paula, one of our cheerleaders. Circa 1976. This is what I looked like when I had gotten out of The Elementary School, and had gone to the Middle School of BEC (Bedford Educational Center). BEC was the former Susie Gibson High School, an all black school that they converted after Desegregation.





But while BEC has its own memories clouded deep within the coming-of-age ritual, it is the Old Elementary School that draws me; this ancient present-day "Middle School" (grades 6th through 8th), and in its beginning, as it says above the great steps, also once the high school, before it was replaced by Liberty High School in the late 1960's. I graduated from Liberty in 1980.

It is this great old Greek Revival American Colonial designed building that attracts me more than any of the others. This great old relic, so well preserved, and in remarkable shape, for one her age. I remember the fights the kids had, and where they were staged, and who won each of them, and that I recall being terrified of 7th graders, and their sizes, and their large, obnoxious ways. I did not have the sense year after year that I was getting any bigger, but that certain people were beginning to 'go missing' every year. Kids I had feared. I had no sense that I was getting any bigger, at all. Just that it was getting easier to get around, and I did not fear the older kids, as I had done. After 5th grade, kids generally let me alone. I had size, and that earned me respect. I began to be the protector for my little brother.

The place is so perfectly preserved, for the most part, that upon seeing any point of interest, for the first time in all of that length of separation, a great wave of stored information comes flooding back out, once again. The exact same type of tables in the cafeteria (could they be the actual period tables? They look too well preserved for that, but...). The great flat marble shelf that was so high to me in those days, now is at the perfect height to toss your books upon. Only now, there are lockers all around where kids can store things under lock and key. No lockers ever used to be needed.

The entrance into the cafeteria lunch line, so perfectly sized at the time, now seems almost funhouse 'small' in its tiny child sized dimensions. The wrapped brick wall out back was much larger in those days.

The small library upstairs where I once read R is for Rocket and S is for Space by Ray Bradbury. I wonder if those same books are still in there, any longer? If I could check them out, now, and read them again?

I remember which teachers had which class rooms and which grades they taught, 3rd through 7th... Names come flooding back as I walk down the gorgeously-ancient waxed stone floors of the hallways. Mr. Saunders, Mrs. Wilburn, Mrs. Sively, Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Wray, Mr. Norrid Davis, Mrs. Coles, Mrs. Jarvis, Mr. Langford, Mr. Hicks, Mrs. Brennan, Miss Wilson, Mrs. Fizer, Mrs. Dixon; I seem to have almost total recall in some areas of my mind. I know where their classrooms were in which they taught, and who was in which one, at the time. I can even remember some things they actually said...

I need a moment

Well, it is here, at last. Tomorrow morning, at 9:30 AM. 50 years old. No longer an old young person, but now, a young old person.

Ambivalent. Yes, that is it. How else to describe this sensation. I worried at 30, fought it at 40 (wore an actual black arm band, and everything!) , and now, 50... doesn't seem like anything, at all.

There is this sense of accomplishment. Things feel better than they used to feel. I am more comfortable in my own skin now than I have ever been. Being less than 50 now seems to have been a wasted effort. Oh, to have had this mindset from the beginning! How nice it would have been!

It is not until tomorrow morning, I know, but the change has been starting since the middle of October. This sort of a relaxed, don't give a dayum feeling. I have big plans, now, to begin an 'enjoyment campaign'; something that Andy Rooney could have never done. Unlike him, I can get still. I can not have to have every dollar that is out there! I can be contented with what things I have...


The first 50 years were for others. The next 50, should they go anywhere near that far, are for me. It is the coolest sensation. It really is. To know that, in a couple of years, I will be considered too old to work! Ha ha! Oh, please! That will be so rich!

I intend to revel in this sensation; this laid back-edness. It is the new deal. I have enough toys, and I have enough experiences now to let off the gas, and coast. I did not plan to feel this way, nor have I any idea from whence this unusual sensation has approached me. It's just here. And it is not unwelcome.

I have done basically what I said I was going to do, even though I have never yet experienced the ice-cold gatorade bath of fame. But I have done it all, as far as I could get it to work. And I have not done too badly, either.

There is only one other time I have ever experienced a similar sensation, and that was getting out of high school. Graduation. It lasted for about two days, and then the raft went down the rapids, again, very fast... for the next 32 years...

Now, that sensation has returned, once more... and if I don't ever do anything else, I plan to make sure it stays, this time. I don't know how I ever got along without it.