Sam Flax keeps my art addiction supplied.

Posted on by Thor

I must stop into Sam Flax, 1800 E Colonial Dr, Orlando, FL, at least once a week for pens, pencils, watercolors or sketchbooks. Doing a sketch every day means I burn through art supplies. I also now use the print department when people order limited edition prints of my work. Murals by local artists decorate the wall next to the entrance. Some of the staff recognize me since I’m in so often. It would be reassuring if they shouted “Norm!” when I walked in. However, since that isn’t my name, I guess that makes no sense.

On Thursdays there are artist workshops which I keep hoping to sketch. On July 16th there is a Metal Tree Art Demonstration by Jessica King.  On July 23rd there is a watercolor pencils demonstration by Tahnee Jane. On July 30th there is painting to music by Leslie Adams. The free classes are from 5-6pm so Mark Your Calendar!

Terry’s Time Trials.

Posted on by Thor

Terry bought a very sporty Porsche. There is little reason to have such a fast car unless you want to drive super fast. Since getting the car she has been taking it to time trials to test her limits. The track was way out on the west side of town up near Mount Dora. The “track” was actually a large open parking lot next to a shooting range. As we approached we could hear the constant sound of fire arms being discharged. It added to the sense of reckless danger.

Cones were set up in the lot to outline the many turns on the test track. Everyone walked the track to get a feel for the layout. Since Terry didn’t have a number for her car, she put a single strip of Blue Duck Tape on the door for the number 1. A sophisticated timing system was set up to keep track of each drivers drive time. Only one driver was on the track at a time. Since this was Terry’s first taste of a time trial, an experienced driver went with her to coach her on how to attack the track. Beginning drivers were first on the track.

When Terry got on the track, the announcer joked that she was certainly having a leisurely Sunday drive. Each time she got on the track however, she improved her time. Her best time 54.031 seconds was less than half the time of her first attempt. She made slow and steady progress. One guy lost control and spun off the track. She smartly pushed herself without going past the breaking point. Driving helmets were required. Her car is in my sketch. It is the silver Porsche with the black soft top convertible roof. Apparently if the car were to roll over, there are support braces that would instantly rise up behind the bucket seats to protect the roof from crushing the drivers head.

After the time trials all the drivers gathered for a Subway‘s catered lunch on the picnic tables by the gun range. There were some very serious drivers who clocked some amazing times that day. Between rounds the drivers would have to wait an eternity for their next turn at the track. For that reason Terry isn’t a great fan of the time trial process. She is still looking to improve her time and push her car to it’s limit. For me it was a relaxing weekend sketch opportunity.

Weekend Top 6 Picks for July 11th and 12th.

Posted on by Thor

Saturday July 11, 2015

8am to 2pm Free. Second Seconds. Monthly antique flea market.

2pm to 4pm $5 with a dish. $10 without. 16th annual Independence for the Animals Picnic/AND Help rescued greyhounds. Mead Gardens 1300 S Denning Dr, Winter Park, FL.join ARFF at our old fashion summertime picnic at beautiful Mead Gardens in Winter Park!

Summertime means FUN! And what better way to spend a summer afternoon than with fellow vegetarians and activists! Join ARFF for an afternoon of fun and games, entertainment and delicious vegan food!

So bring your friends and family, your favorite vegan dish

(with ingredients card) and join us for this summertime tradition.

*A portion of the proceeds will benefit greyhound adoption*

6pm to 9pm Free. Bastille Day Bike Decorating Contest.  1603 Winter Park Rd, Orlando, FL.  Ride your decorated bike to #APGD’s 7th Annual Bastille Day Festival and be automatically entered in our Bastille Bash Bike contest! Show us your finest French decorating ideas and you might win some of our fun, cheap prizes! The Bastille Bash Bike contest will take place at our Bastille Day Street Celebration (6 to 9 pm), outside Emmanuel Episcopal Church Orlando, FL. Ride up anytime you want – judging and prizes will be handed out at around 8 pm-ish!

Sunday July 12, 2015

1pm to 3pm $5 Film Slam. Enzian Theater, South Orlando Avenue, Maitland, FL. Originally a project of University of Central Florida’s Downtown Media Arts Center, Enzian became the home of FilmSlam when DMAC closed in 2006. Now in its fifth year at Enzian, FilmSlam continues to be a popular outlet for indie and student filmmakers throughout the State of Florida.

FilmSlam will usually be held on the second Sunday of each month at 1PM at Enzian.

COME CELEBRATE INDEPENDENTS DAY!!!

It’s so hot outside our brains just melted! So, this month we’ve booked the craziest FilmSlam line up of the year.

Experimental Films, Puppet Films, Art Films, Bartenders throwing bottles, Gangsters, a Music Video….this has to be the most amazingly eclectic line we’ve had for all of 2012.

Program starts at 1pm sharp. Q&A with the filmmakers to follow screening.

1pm to 3pm Free. Script Reading Workshop. Sleuths Mystery Dinner Show, 8267 International Drive, Orlando, FL. Read and workshop plays.

9pm to 11pm Free but grab a coffee. Comedy Open Mic. Austin’s Coffee, 929 W Fairbanks Ave, Winter Park, FL. Free comedy show! Come out & laugh, or give it a try yourself.

Nerd Nite moved from Stardust to the Geek Easy.

Posted on by Thor

Stardust Video and Coffee,
(1842 E Winter Park Rd, Orlando, Florida) hosted the 23rd consecutive and first Nerd Nite Orlando event!

The evening consisted of entertaining yet thought-provoking talks across many disciplines, all while the audience drinks along in a casual bar atmosphere. Speakers present for 15-20 minutes each on a fascinating subject of their choice, often in an uncanny and unconventional way. Following each presentation is a brief Question and Answer with the audience.

Quench your curiosity! Come meet up, drink, and learn something new!

The first presentation was “DNA Nanotechnology: A Breakthrough For Us All” by Felix Sosa.

The talk is about the history, development, and possible future of the great breakthrough known as DNA nanotechnology. Felix is an undergraduate researcher at UCF working towards a Bachelor’s degree in both chemistry and computer science. He currently is a part of a large-scale research effort between the Chemistry Department, NanoScience Technology Center and Physics Department at UCF designing, simulating and synthesizing DNA architectures that have vast applications from medicines to computational machines. His talk opened our eyes to the incredible possibilities right around the corner.

My favorite talk of the evening was “Trash to Treasure: Hoarding Demystified” by Heather Grove.  If you are a hoarder, have friends or family who hoard, or just know about it from the Discovery channel, you know it is a serious, life-threatening disease. With 1 in 30 Americans afflicted by the not so uncommon disorder, Heather hopes to shed some light on the science behind collecting shit.

Since she was one, Heather has found value in what most might consider valueless. From rocks to wine cork collections, Heather has been an avid acquirer of things, but with an extreme hoarder in the family, she has fought the genetic proclivity to collect stuff by understanding the science and specifics of the disease…she hopes to help others transform their habits from hoarding to helping re purpose waste and keep it from landfills. By day, Heather turns wasteful lawns into food-growing gardens and she is co-creator of East End Market. Her talk hit home because she had family that were hoarders. This made her talk more personal as she tried to explain her own hording tendencies. I myself seem to be a hoarder. I collected rocks and minerals as a child, coins, stamps and now I collect shelves full of sketchbooks. My studio is a riot of materials and books making it hard to even enter the room. Yet, since I still create every day, I don’t seek a cure.

The final talk, “The Cosmetology Cosmologist” by Derek Demeter. Derek has been Planetarium Director at Seminole State College of Florida since 2007. He writes and produces new shows that explore the astronomy and history of numerous cultures from around the world. He serves as Vice President of the Central Florida Astronomical Society and sets up telescopes at local shopping centers to give the public a truly “out-of-this world” experience.

After this evening, Ricardo Williams took the helm to lead Nerd Nite into the future. Now the events are being held monthly at the Geek Easy ( 114 S Semoran Blvd Suite 6, Winter Park, Florida). Mark your calendar! The next Nerd Nite is Ladies Nite and it will be tonight, July 9th from 7pm to 9pm.

There’s a White Elephant in the room.

Posted on by Thor

Believe it or not, this is a sketch from December of 2014. I’m going through all the sketchbooks and finding sketches that I didn’t post yet. Terry and I went to the home of Wendy Wallenburg‘s friend Christine Billis right before Christmas. Everyone was encouraged to bring a rather quirky present for a White Elephant gift exchange. Of course there was plenty of food and drink before everyone settled in the living room for the exchange.

With a White Elephant gift exchange, you can pick a wrapped present, or you can steal a present that had already been opened. When it was my turn to pick, Terry encouraged me to steal the bottles of booze that had been someone Else’s pick. We hid the booze under a chair but soon enough it was swiped back. Every item that Terry got seemed to be swiped away, because she had to keep going up to take another turn.

Towards the end of the party, I was introduced to a young teen who loves to draw. I told her all about my new teaching gig at Elite Animation Academy. Hopefully I helped inspire her to pursue her dream. That’s what I love about my new job, I get to teach kids who are young enough to have never said to themselves “I can’t” or “I don’t know how.” Kids create with wild abandon.

Birdman questioned what is real and what is imagined.

Posted on by Thor

Terry and I went to see Birdman at the Enzian Theater,1300 S Orlando Ave, Maitland, FL. While I waited for her to arrive at the Eden Bar outside the movie theater, I couldn’t resist doing a sketch. I ordered an Orange Blossom Pilsner and sketched as fast as I could. The advantage of being an artist in this digital age is that people who focus their attention on their phones become completely absorbed and therefor never notice that they are being sketched.

Birdman turned out to be one of my favorite movies of 2014. It was much like Hitchcock’s The Rope in which there were no discernible cuts between scenes. The movie was about an actor who was famous for his role as Birdman in the movies but he wanted to be taken serious as a true artist. He wrote and directed a play for Broadway that he hoped would revitalize peoples perceptions of him as a true artist. The camera followed his every move as opening night approached. The first scene showed him in his dressing room in a cross legged yoga pose. As the camera pulled back you realized that he wasn’t only meditating, he was floating above the floor. My disbelief was suspended and I accepted each of his supernatural yet ego centric quirks.

What happened on stage always seemed to reflect what was going on in his own life. Because there were no obvious camera cuts, the moments seemed to play out in real time right until the opening night of the show on Broadway. Much of what happened might have been imagined by the narcissistic director played by Michael Keaton. There was a hilarious moment when he took a cigarette break right outside the stage door. A stage hand closed the door locking him out and he had to walk around the block, through Times Square in his underwear to get to the front entrance of the theater. Did this actually happen, or did he imagine the humiliating situation? Every scene raised these type of questions. This wasn’t a CGI effects block buster, but it was a smartly written drama that raised more questions than answers. I absolutely loved it. The film garnered wide critical praise, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, along with the Best Director for González Iñárritu, the Best Original Screenplay, and the Best Cinematography from a total of nine nominations, tying it with The Grand Budapest Hotel for being the most nominated film of the Academy’s 87th annual awards ceremony. Michael Keaton deserved to win the Academy Award as the best actor.

Barre Bellas tones muscles with dance stretches and strength.

Posted on by Thor

I went to ‘Barre Bellas‘ at 1061 South Sun Drive Suite 1121 Lake Mary Florida to sketch Dion Leonhard as she lead a strenuous dance workout. She has classes are every Monday and Wednesday starting at 10:30am and 11:30am. She also
offers private one-on-one classes. The full class line-up with other
teachers is available on the website.She also offers a dancer, theater, student,and performer discount at $15 per class and a package of 5 classes for $50. The package is good for a year. This discount is only available for her classes, so individuals interested need to contact her on Facebook or email Dion_Christine@yahoo.com smile emoticon.

Dion is a talented dancer and actress. I first sketched her years ago when she danced for Emotions Dance and now she is part of the quirky cast of Phantasmagoria, a Gothic Steampunk group that tells tales of horror. She has always been a master of classic ballet and modern dance. After the initial stretches on the pink yoga mats, everyone lined up at the barre at the front of the classroom. Stretches, with one foot up on the barre involved both strength and dexterity. One woman’s knees started to shake as she tried to hold the pose. Although the workout seemed simple enough, it clearly pushed everyone to their limit. I later learned that the one guy in the class, Stelson Telfort, was the actor who played Hooper in Beth Marshall Presents, Hoodies. After this group was finished with their workout, an individual women came in for a one on one instruction session. What a great opportunity to get fit and toned head to head with on of Orlando’s top talents.

Violectric Debut Revolutionary LED Instrument Lighting “Violuminescence” at Bite.

Posted on by Thor

Bite Night, hosted by the Orlando Weekly was held at The Orchid Garden and Ballroom at Church Street in Downtown Orlando from 7pm-10pm on June 29th.   I went to the event specifically to sketch the premiere performance of Violuminence. 

Michelle Jones the founder of Violectric asked her husband, Jerry Jones, the groups technical director to design the diodes along the rims of the instruments which made them glow like souped up Harley Davidson motorcycles. Violuminescence produces unique, lighted string instruments that can be remote controlled to enhance any performance in an unrivaled manner.

When I arrived, the event was just getting started but there were already long lines for food. I immediately started hunting for my sketch opportunity. I ran into Ilene Lieber the groups pleasant and hard working PR representative and she let me know that the Violuminence performance would start at 9pm in front of the DJs table on the main floor. That gave me several hours to sketch in the Orchid Room’s magical turn of the century decor. When Violumenence began, I added color starting with the blue glow of the instruments. The instruments glowed in every color of the rainbow as if celebrating the recent Supreme Court decision allowing everyone to share the rights of marriage.

“We are beyond excited to finally unveil Violuminescence to the public later the month,” said founder of Violectric and Fretless Rock, Michelle Jones.  “This will be the first opportunity for public audiences to experience Violuminescence and revel in this truly spectacular and awe-inspiring musical innovation.  We are known for getting audiences up out of their seats and dancing along with us as we play, and we look forward to blowing away all our loyal fans with Violuminescence and hopefully gaining many more new ones worldwide.”

When the violins performed Journey‘s Don’t Stop Believing, everyone in the room started singing along. “Shadows searching in the night”. It was really a magical moment. The crowd was hooked and I sang along as I sketched. The violinists weren’t passive. They began moving around the room finding their way through the crowd.  By the time my sketch was done, the crowd was starting to thin out. All the food vendors had packed up. Darn it. I hadn’t tasted a bite so I can’t report on how good the food was. Genevieve Bernard and Seth Kubersky told me that the food directly across the room from me was absolutely delicious. I am pleased by the rich warm and cool colors that I could catch with my digital sketch.  For more information on Violectric contact 407-434-1261 and for more information on Fretless Rock by Strings Etc visit their web page.

Beer tasting at East End Market.

Posted on by Thor

I went to East End Market, 3201 Corrine Drive Orlando, FL, where I have some cards on consignment displayed at Local Roots Farm Store which brings the freshness and quality of the farm
directly to the city, including local produce, artisan foods and craft
beer. I was advised to get a rotating card stand to display the cards but it had slots which were too large for the 5 by 7 inch cards I had created. Because the slats are so large, cards kept falling on the floor and I was asked to remove the display. I’m thinking that I could hand make foam core boxes that could keep the cards from falling but that is a complex task that is on the back burner for now. For now, my cards are on display in a small wicker basket on a shelf.

The bar is made of a huge single slab of wood that curves elegantly.  Taylor and Megan were trying a beer sampler which had six shot sized glasses of beer for their tasting pleasure. I like this sampler idea. I just started a monthly artist group called “Drink and Draw” and the idea is to sample beers at a different bar each month with a group of artists. I am hoping to refine my tastes while also sketching.

Mark your Calendar. The first Orlando Drink and Draw (ODD) event will be at Taverna Opa, 9101 International Drive, #2240, Orlando, FL from 5:30pm to 8:30pm on July 6th. Taverna Opa has an assortment of unique Mediterranean dishes. But you might not be too focused on the food as restaurant goers participate in the traditional Zorba line dance and throw plates and napkins on the floor. I’m having to re-think my retail display since cards keep falling on the floor, but it has to be fun sketching a restaurant and bar with plates and napkins getting thrown on the floor.

Weekend Top 6 Picks for July 4th and 5th.

Posted on by Thor

Saturday July 4, 2015

4pm to 10pm Free. Fireworks at Lake Eola. Lake Eola Park 512 East Washington Street Orlando FL. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer invites Central Florida residents and visitors
to attend Fireworks at the Fountain on Saturday, July 4, 2015 at Lake
Eola Park in Downtown Orlando. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early
in order to find a great viewing spot. The night will conclude with a
patriotic firework display over Lake Eola, which will begin at 9:10 p.m.

 6pm to 8pm Free. Brewery Tour. Orlando Brewing, 1301 Atlanta Ave, Orlando, FL.

7pm to 9pm Free.  Swingout Saturday. 644 Florida Central Parkway, Longwood, Florida. The music is hot and the dance floor will rock! Beginner dance lesson at 7pm. Dancing from 8 to 11pm.



Sunday July 5, 2015 

Noon to 5pm Free but get a beer. Sunday’s with Smiling Dan. The Falcon Bar & Gallery, 819 East Washington Street, Orlando, FL. DJ mixes music for the afternoon.

9pm to 11pm Free but get a coffee. Comedy Open Mic. Austin’s Coffee, 929 W Fairbanks Ave, Winter Park, FL. Free comedy show! Come out & laugh, or give it a try yourself.

9pm to 11pm Free but get a coffee. Solo Acoustic Spoken Word. Natura Coffee & Tea, 12078 Collegiate Way, Orlando, FL. 407 482-5000.