MY BLOG

Melbourne Sketch-About

06/29/2012

Melbourne Sketch-About

Back in May, I reluctantly agreed to take a one day sketch workshop with my dear friend, Christy. I love doing these things with her but it was literally the day after I returned a 5 day trip to NY to attend Surtex.  I knew I would be tired and not in the mood for a day-long outing but she begged so I agreed to let her pick me up at 6:30 that morning and drive us over to Melbourne to take a sketch-about workshop with Diana Hollingsworth Gessler. All I can say, is "Thank you Christy! and thank you Diana!" 

Right off the bat Diana greeted us with her catch-phrase which I love and have since tacked in big letters on my studio bulletin board:

Diana is a lovely and talented artist.  Her workshop was pure delight!  She has published several beautiful sketch books and teaches a great class full of tips on how to take notice of your surroundings and ways to quickly make your notes and drawings into delightful books of colorful memories.  I so enjoyed the entire day and I greatly appreciate the valuable insights she shared. I recommend her workshop to anyone out there of any skill level.  Everyone can be an artist and enjoy sketch journaling.  Sign up for one of her workshops here.

That day was the catalyst for serious change.  Do I need someone to show me how to sketch? No, but do I need someone to kick me in the ass... YES!  It was such a wonderful, carefree day and just the jump-start I needed to open the blank sketchbook and get lost in the pure pleasure of drawing again, for no one but myself.  I am grateful for that gentle reminder that creating art can and should be fun!  Something that has long been missing while I've been consumed with creating commercial art for a living...and something I intend to change!

First on our agenda was creating an interesting cover page from the research she had done of the area. Of all things... Melbourne beach was known for it's large mosquito population!

Picking some fun and historical facts to illustrate is key when creating a sketch journal about your trip.  After a quick tour and chat from our lovely host, Marty, we sketched the Ryckman house and the park next door.  Adding an element of architecture and something botanical as well as a "surprise" (the fire hydrant) gives a variety of design elements and keeps the pages lively and interesting.

Next on the stop was lunch at Billie's On The Beach - 5* Urban Spoon rating... fabulous food!! and what about the view!

There were lots of quaint items to sketch here, but food and chatting used up most of my sketch time.  It is turtle nesting season here so the sign above our table proved an interesting and quick art element.  Before we left, Billie's husband surprised us with a unique and authentic key lime pie served in half a coconut shell.  Delicious!

Next stop - a visit to the historical town hall, full of so many antiques and artifacts, was a feast for the eyes, so choosing one element and keeping it simple was the suggested lesson here.

Back at our destination point, we all created what Diana calls "Talking Heads", little quick sketches of ourselves to drop in the pages of our sketch journals now and then.  A simpler version of what Norman Rockwell did in many of his paintings! ( I am in the top left hand corner.) Then we passed around our book and let everyone put their heads on our pages and sign them.  A really fun ending to a really fun day!

Thanks Christy, for dragging me out and thanks Diana (the one in the hat) for a really fun day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meet Elizabeth St.Hilaire Nelson

...and her paper paintings extraordinaire!

To say nothing of that killer skirt she's wearing!!  

My friend and fellow artist, Loreen Leedy found Elizabeth's stunning work in a St. Augustine gallery during a recent trip with her hubby.  She did some research and found out Elizabeth lives right here in our own back yard!  We were both so taken with her colorful collage work and eager to get some pointers from the pro herself, so we signed up for a short 4 hour workshop which we attended on Saturday at the home studio of Judy Segall, another talented artist who makes the most beautiful hand made papers.

Our assignment was to arrive with an apple loosely painted on a wooden panel and a variety of painted papers in the colors of the apple.  Turns out that leaving this assignment til the last minute (some things never change) was not so bad.  On Friday, I found myself frantically painting papers with no time for much thought.  Before you know it I was stamping and splashing and spattering with reckless abandon and having a blast!  WHY?  Because I did not have a set plan or any expectations of a masterpiece!  I was having so much fun making a mess with these papers, time was running out and I had not yet painted my apple on the board!  By 10:30 Friday night I was finally packed and ready to go with the painted apple, lots of painted paper and all my supplies needed for the Saturday morning workshop.

Elizabeth's demo apple painted on a wooden panel board with acrylics.

Here she is applying bits of torn colored papers, carefully matching the hues and tones as closely as she can to her apple painting. 

(Not to obsess but... is that a KILLER SKIRT or what?!!!!!)

How quickly time flies when you are having fun. Our time is up and although this is not finished, you can get an idea of how nicely her apple is progressing.

So much fun!  Thanks, Elizabeth, for sharing your process.  You are as lovely a person as is your art and I so enjoyed meeting you and having fun creating - just for the sake of creating! And thank you Judy for hosting the workshop in your studio!

To see some of Elizabeth's amazing work visit her blog and just for fun, sign up for a workshop in your hometown - do it for the sake of pure enjoyment!

Finally a glorious, sunny day!

Friday, March 19th -  My Dad's birthday

Now this is why we live here!  What gorgeous weather we had on Friday!  And boy did I need an outing. I've been stuck inside for days on end working on a project with a tight deadline.  Felt so good to get out with Eddie and walk through the Winter Park Art Festival.  Met up with some wonderful people I have not seen in a while, old friends and artists I know - and saw a lot of great, inspiring art.  We even had a sausage and pepper sandwich in honor of my dad, who's birthday it is today.  I miss you Daddy.  Now... back to the real world.  Chubby Easter bunnies and Chicks all over my drawing board!

Hope you enjoyed a little sunshine in your life today!

Plein Air Workshop

Wow!  Finally something really exciting to post about!  Glad to be home, sleeping in my own bed but what a wonderful experience my plein air painting workshop was!  I am so in love with the whole process!  Why didn’t I try this sooner???!  There is way too much information to fit into a blog post, but all in all, a FANTABULOUS experience!  It felt really, really good to get outside of my little 10 X 10 studio, away from commercial illustration and my Mac and to paint (or attempt it, anyway) like a “real” artist! I highly recommend taking any workshop in whatever you are interested in, but if it’s plein air painting, Larry Moore’s the guy for you.

Aside from learning the ins and outs of painting in the great outdoors, I gained so much knowledge about basic oil painting with regard to mixing color from a limited palette of red, blue and yellow as well as the three color key components: hue, value and chroma and how it all relates to quick, impressionistic field studies. Working at becoming an artist is just a continuous series of learning experiences, isn’t it?  I guess we are never done and why would we want to be?

I was fortunate to know Larry personally so I knew ahead of time that I was really gunna learn sum’pin!  Thank you Larry, for all the knowledge and experience you shared - the laughs, and personal, one-on-one attention you gave me, and most of all for teaching me the basics of “Impressionating.”  This is a word I made up at breakfast one morning... it just came out and he liked it so much, he used it all week.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see it show up on his blog or in future hand-outs!

Larry... you are indeed The Impressionator

As the weekend progressed we all came up with a few other “Larry-isms”... “smurteling” (schmering paint around), “grello” (greyish-yellow),  “breen” (a lovely shade of army green),  “flabert” (a flattened down version of a filbert and flat brush), “palm-fronder brush” (self explanitory...we were all wishing someone would invent one of these) and last but surely one of my personal favorites, “scogs” (while painting downtown we witnessed several packs of retired-folk zooming by in hog-like gangs, on their scooters!)  Good one, Jeff!

I’m not posting any of my little practice paintings for obvious reasons.  I will say this, though, I went on this excursion purely to learn the basics, with no expectations of bringing home any masterpieces.... and I was not disappointed!! 

Here are a few highlights from our adventures. 

Our hotel, The Hotel Jacaranda, or as we fondly like to call it, the "Jac"... a relic, to be sure, but clean and comfortable.  Not to mention reasonable.  A mere $62.00 a day for the two of us.  Right within the starving artist's budget!

The lobby.  Not too much has changed here since 1920!  One of the pluses for us was the  $8.99 lunch and dinner buffet.  Including delicious iced tea, great fried chicken, stuffed cabbage, mashed potatoes and gravy... salad bar.. yummm... I knew I was going to miss that!

This elevator had a crank mechanism inside and only the hotel office girl could work it, so you had to ring a bell and wait if you needed it.  She had to carefully stop it so the floor of the elevator would be even with the hallway floor.  Sometimes it took more than one jumpy try!

Anyone else thinking of "The Shining"... "here comes Johnny!" For some reason, whenever I trudged down this massive hall, The Eagles "Hotel California" kept replaying in my mind.  "You can check in anytime you want, but you can never leave!"

This was the funniest thing. The sink was in the middle of the room!  It had the 2 original knobs- the old fashioned kind spread far apart-that makes warm water impossible to attain! The bathroom had a toilet with no lid and a stand up shower, also with two knobs.  I guess we were lucky, Larry had only a footed tub with a hand held shower attachment.  By the way... yes, the TV had a remote control, so the room does not meet my camping criteria, but darn close, to be sure!

We had two outing days to the nearby Highlands Hammock State Park, a very cool place indeed.  Fortunately we didn't have to stray far from the main area where there were restrooms and a really great restaurant for lunch.  So all that stuff I packed did not have to be schlepped too far.  I still managed to lose my prescription glasses somewhere in the madness.

This was our first day in the park.  By the end of the second day, we were all pretty tired of painting trees and various clusters of green & brown - a difficult subject to make sense of but a great lesson in value and hue.  Here are some progressive shots from Larry's first demo.  The Impressionator managed to make sense of this blur and pull a great painting out of it!

Day two demo of nearby building.

 

Day three... out of the woods and on to Main Street in downtown Avon Park.

Here's a shot of our group, intently watching every stroke. 

Thanks Larry! Can't wait to do it again!

One more thing... while reviewing Larry’s hand out and recommended reading, a title looked awfully familiar.  So I took myself out to my bookshelf and sure enough, I already own this book!  “Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light And Color”, by Kevin D. MacPherson.  I am sure I bought it at least 15 years ago and this morning I reviewed it once again with my morning coffee only to find that now, after the hands-on-experience of painting plein air, it had taken on a wonderful new meaning!  At the very back of the book, in a small yellow box, Kevin states this very true message, “Read art books over and over again.  What doesn’t make sense today may make sense down the road when you have more experience.”   Good advice to remember.

Well, my backpack's packed

...and I'm ready to go! 

(Not leaving on a jet plane, though!)

My pal Loreen and I are heading south to Avon Park... somewhere in the middle of po-dunk Florida, for a plein air painting workshop!  Yep... we're going out to be "real" artists this week and we're pretty darned excited!  Leaving behind the children's book illustrating and the nifty-gifty product designing and heading out to paint nature for 3 straight days! 

Mind you, packing, schlepping and trekking through the brush, is not usually my cup of tea. Looks and sounds a lot like camping to me... and my idea of camping is a hotel room with no remote control for the TV!  But I am willing to make a few sacrifices to learn from my oh-so-accomplished fellow artist and good friend, Larry Moore .  I'm really, really looking forward to the whole experience.  Larry says I will be addicted after just one outing. I suspect he is probably right.  :~)

We are actually staying in the little town of Avon Park at what appears to be a charming inn right on Main St. called The Hotel Jacaranda (I'll let you know if it passes the camping criteria test) We'll be painting at Highlands Hammock State Park.  The weather is turning cool which is okay with me and I'm feeling pretty well prepared for a "delicate flower" who needs many creature comforts - most importantly - a place to plug in her flat iron!  No worries, though... the hat is packed along side the insect repellant.  (I'm nothing if not adaptable). 

So... I'll let you know how it goes.  There will be lots to tell upon our return.  Speaking of posts, this one is pretty lame compared to what Loreen posted on her blog yesterday! While I was hunting, gathering and packing supplies, she was actually doing a dry-run practice session in her studio.  Check it out!  No pressure there!

Happy Easter Everyone!

Lunch with Beej

My friend and fellow artist, BJ Lantz and I, only live a little more than an hour away from each other and yet we only seem to see each other either in NY or Atlanta at one show or another.  We vowed to try to do better at meeting more often so about 3 weeks ago we met for lunch in DeLand, a quaint little town about half way between us.

Check us out!

Although her favorite second hand store is closed, Beej still managed
to land this sexy find... at a bargain price, I might add!

I, on the other hand, managed to land this sexy find.

Just what I need.  Another character around my house!

Leu Gardens with Loreen

This sketching day actually took place two weeks ago.  I'm a little behind, but better late than never, I guess.  We are planning another outing on Monday, so I thought I'd better catch up quick!

Our day began at Loreen's brother's used book store where all of her books are proudly displayed right up front.  If you ever need to find a book contact Robert at Leedy's Book Store.  I never know what kind of treasure I will find there.  Laurel Burch's Fantastic Felines beautifully illustrated and full of inspiration immediately jumped off the shelf and went home with me!

Check out all of Loreen's wonderful books! 

Now on to a date with nature

 

Artist's day out

It was a gorgeous day in Winter Park.  A good reminder of why we live in central Florida.  Armed with our cameras and sketchbooks, my artist pal Loreen and I ventured out for lunch and inspiration.  We got exactly what we were after.  What a perfect way to recharge our batteries!  We must break out of our studios and do this more often.