Cabin at Wekiwa State Park Youth Camp

After a week of painting at the Wekiwa State Park and the the Wekiva River it is good to sleep in my own bed again. Not that having a cabin all to myself was that bad. I would have liked a little heat on a couple of those nights. The full moon kept the path lit at night so I could find the bathroom. I got a few nice photos of deer and turkeys early in the morning when I was looking for the next spot to paint. I will go back to my studio and create some paintings from the photos; one of these days. As I sat on the front porch of my cabin, I painted the cabin next door in the youth camp. The shadows of the trees stretched across the wall of the cabin. Can you imagine sleeping in that building with ten kids?

Spruce Creek

Sometimes a sky can be bold and beautiful. Many cloud formations make for great paintings. I always wanted to live somewhere that I could watch the clouds pass over the landscape without ever seeing any buildings in sight. For now, I'll just drive out of the city and watch the clouds from one of the local parks I visit. This painting of clouds is from Spruce Creek near New Smyrna, FL. I was doing a demonstration for my class last weekend showing how to paint clouds in the sky. The secret is to paint them loosely and quickly in watercolor. If I spend more than five minutes painting a sky, I think I have overworked it. The rest of the painting was painted rather loosely also. Sometimes; not showing a lot of detail, lets the viewer use their own imagination to connect the dots. And I'm not referring to the birds in the sky. Did you notice them?

Lake Helen Barn

During the last plein air painting event I attended in Lake Helen I went for a drive through town one morning. I found this little old barn on the outskirts of town. It was one of those old barns that looked like it was about to fall down. Overcome with growth, this barn hadn't been used in years but it stood there as an icon of days past. I stopped my car and did a quick painting. As I was painting, a person stopped by to tell me she saw someone painting that barn some twenty years ago and she purchase the painting from that artist. She was so proud of it she went home and took the painting off the wall and came back to show it to me. The field was full of pink wildflowers. She told me to come back in May and I might see some of the wildflowers at that time. I was especially interested in the white tree that stood out in front of the barn, I painted part of the tree with a masking fluid in the beginning then added a few more small branches with white in the end. I feel like the limbs are reaching out to touch you.

Ponce Inlet Lighthouse

What a wonderful site is the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse. This view is from across the inlet looking north from New Smyrna Beach. It stands today as one of the best preserved and most complete authentic light stations in the nation. It was completed in 1887 and is the tallest lighthouse in the state of Florida at 175 feet high. Across the inlet are a few scattered homes and a couple of marinas. I was intrigued by the way the landscape was divided into three different sections, the sky, the water and the beach. Each section was to be it's own element. The "Z" composition brings you from the bottom left to the middle right and then pushes you back to the left again where the lighthouse is the exclamation point of the painting. A nice trip through the painting and up the 203 steps to the top of the 175 foot tower. Are you ready to make the trip?

Painted Lady

I recently went with a group of artists to paint in conjunction with the Lake Helen Holiday Tour. Each artist had the opportunity to choose a home to paint that was a part of the tour and to do a painting of it on location. I found this old victorian style house that was mostly white but the lower area around the porch was painted in three different colors. I soon learned that the owner of the home was in the process of painting the house the original colors. This style of colorful architecture is called "Painted Ladies" and comes from the San Francisco area. A rare find in Central Florida. Though the owner had not yet finished painting his house, I decided to finish the Painted Lady in this watercolor painting. One of the people coming by on the tour saw the painting and purchased it for her home. It must have been the combination of colors that attracted her to the painting.

Florida Cracker House

This painting is of a newer home on Lake Howell in Central Florida. The design is of course based upon the old Florida style homes. A large open porch around the house makes it an ideal place to have a nice quiet rest and sip on a cool glass of lemonade. Of course it wouldn't be Florida without the palms in front of the house, hanging moss in the oak trees, and also the staghorn fern hanging from the oak tree too. You can sit on the back porch and have a great view a Saturday morning regatta on Lake Howell. What could be nicer than that?

While looking through old photos at the Sanford Museum I came across a photograph of an old steamboat at dock on Lake Monroe. I was more excited about the foreground with the two small boats and the grass along the lake's edge than I was about the dock. I was especially interested in the way all the little nuances of composition pointed you towards the dock and steamboat. Even the stairs on the right side took you down the steps just to have the small boats take your eye back up to the center of interest. It must have been a great time to live, back in the 1880' before gasoline and automobiles. Wouldn't you rather ride a steamboat than a Greyhound?

Early Morning

I recently took a trip back to Ohio to visit family and friends. In Ohio there is a easel that I keep in my mom's garage so that it will be there each time I return home to visit. I always try to find a few days where I can paint in the area that I knew as a child. This year I spent two weeks there and was able to get over six small paintings completed. I wanted a different viewpoint so I stood inside one barn looking out to another barn on my Uncle's farm. This particular morning started out with a frost on the ground and a fog that didn't lift until after 10:30 in the morning. My painting didn't want to dry fast so I got a lot of interesting soft blends and blurring effects, including the inside of the old barn that formed the outside edges of the painting. I took a walk in the nearby woods as I let the painting have a chance to dry. I watched my cousin bring in few trees with an old tractor that my Uncle will use for heat this winter. That will make another interesting painting. When I returned to my almost dry painting; I put in a few of the bolder colors and indicated some of the near trees and shrubs with some calligraphic strokes of a rigger brush. Finished painting is 16 x 20 on Arches Watercolor board (A new surface material I am trying that does not need a mat and glass when finished.) Doesn't this finished painting remind you of a cool foggy autumn morning?