Sanford Florida: The Barbara Lee

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The Barbara Lee of the Saint John’s River Company is docked at (433 N Palmetto Ave, Sanford, FL). The river boat became the site of The Barbara Lee Comedy Wedding which is a fun dinner theater show.

A group of misplaced New Yorkers arrive at the river boat and what follows is an ill planned, madcap wedding. The audience is part of the dinner party and if anything can go wrong it does go wrong to hilarious effect. On the three hour cruise the guests enjoy a four course meal while the bride and groom cope with escalating high jinks.

Performances are on the 2nd and 4th Sunday of each month. Guests board at 4:30pm and the boat leaves the dock, cruising from 5-8pm. There is also a 4th Thursday boarding at 10:30am for lunchtime wedding chaos. Tickets are $85.

Ringling Library Demo

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One of my online students is planning to attend Ringling College here in Florida. I asked her to pick one of the Ringling College buildings to sketch and she chose the library.

I worked on a sketch along with her to show how to block in the big shapes and then work towards smaller detail. When we got to color I stressed leaving the lightest areas alone. The temptation is to add some color to the light areas first but that only darkens them.

The other lesson is to always make a mess and then try and clean it up. The goal isn’t photo realism but a rough monstrosity that could have been painted by a child. I am proud to say that my student is now a Ringling student and forging her way towards a new career. The building looks a bit like a gator wearing horse blinders.

COVID Dystopia: Iowa Independent Film Festival

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Mums are in season in Clear Lake Iowa. I stood in front of a flower shot tha t had so many mums on sale that they wrapped around the block. I had. Arrived at the Lake Theater in Clear Lake Iowa early to sketch.
People I’m Iowa are so nice. I dropped a few of the movie marketing cards while I was setting up to sketch. A woman’s driving by stopped to shout out her window to let me know I had dropped the cards. While I was sketching the film festival organizers showed up with a card table, and some banners. One of the. Stopped in the middle of the street to shoot a cell phone photo of then marquee.

i picked up my filmmaker lanyard and spent the day watching films. There were some stinkers and some real gems.

Ben Riggin, one of the festival organizers told me a bit about the history of the theater. It used to be an opera house. Opera singers used to travel from city to city to, perform opera. It was like vaudeville bit with a touch more class. This  traveling opera tradition ended around the 1920s. The the building res converted into a movie house which is still is today.

COVID Dystopia was shown in the third block of films. There was applause after the credits rolled which is rewarding. I never know how an audience will react. After the screening a group of young filmmakers asked me more questions outside. They wanted to know about the music by Any Matchett and I got to tell them about Key of E the post apocalyptic rock musical.

I am really amazed COVID Dystopia screened in Iowa. Iowa is a very deep red state that embraced Trump. This short has many scenes denigrating Trumps failed COVID policies. Granted I am the only one masked at all the film festival screenings and after parties but no one has given me a hard time about it.

Crealde Student on Sculptural Bench

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In the Urban Sketching class I teach at Crealde, we have one solid day devoted to sketching each other. Poses are fast and the goal isn’t to produce a detailed portrait, but to create a scene.

I keep stressing the importance of grounding the figures. In this scen the base of the sculptural bench is critical to seeing the ground plane. The bench itself unfortunately is seen straight on. Seeing another plane of the sculpture would have made it more three dimensional.

Another point of the demo however was to treat the person and the bench as one single bold shape. With just two large washes the page was covered and the sketch felt complete although it could use plenty of loving care adding details if time allowed. For instance there is a hint of the shape of the shoes but I haven’t gone back in to add the detail to describe the shoes shape and make.

Crealde Student

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In my Crealde Urban Sketching class, we take one class to do fast five or ten minute poses with each student taking a turn.

As a demo I sketch each student in turn and try and encourage the students to capture more that the person but the entire scene.

There is a frantic energy to working so fast and the goal to get the students to work just as fast and frenetic. Sketches become less detail oriented and more simplified. Detail is only added where it is needed.

I am always pushing students to look for the curve of the back so in this sketch there is one curve drawn behind the figure to show that curve. It was the first line to go on the page.

Tiny Home Orlando

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This sketch was done as a demo for a student. Sketches done for students are usually done much faster and with full knowledge that I will not have time to put the usual amount of detail into the sketch.

Most students want to do many sketches with little detail. This is a rare example therefor of how one of my sketches start before I put in detail and layers washes of color. Color is applied in large washes that gradually get smaller with each pass.

The simple building is a tiny house outside of the Orlando Science Center. It has solar panels on the roof. I have looked at tiny homes as a studio option. I would have to get my giant Disney animation desk inside somehow. Part of me thinks the tiny home might topple over once the desk throws off the balance.

I am looking around for a place to live and I look at homes in just about every state to get a feel for what I need in a home studio. One priority is large windows with northern light. For some reason I am finding myself drawn to homes with red metal roofs. I am also finding I like rustic cabins with either mountain views of a creek nearby. What I seem to want is a fortress of solitude, but within driving distance of a community with a thriving arts scene.

Disney Feature Animation Internship: Baloo

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The final project for the Disney Feature Animation internship involved animating a scene in which Baloo from The Jungle Book, pulls on something.

These are just a few of the quick studies I did to get a feeling for how to construct the character. These are just a few of the many sketches I did to get a feel for the character before animating. There were just 22 days to go before the internship ended. I was going quite stir craze and longed to get back to NYC.

My plan was to have Baloo pull an elephant’s trunk. I don’t know why I couldn’t just have him pull a rope or a vine. I always have to over complicate things. This would mean I would be animating two characters instead of one.

Disney Feature Animation Internship: MGM

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Since the Disney Feature Animation Studio was on the back lot of the Disney MGM Studios theme park, I often walked into the park to sketch at lunch time. I didn’t have an art stool, so I would always sketch from whatever bench happened to be available. Benches are seldom situated in scenic spots.

I do believe that is the Brown Derby Restaurant. They had a really good Cobb Salad that I liked. A very rough sketch of the Tower of Terror is off to the left.

After a day of animating, I would see the search lights probing the sky above Epcot. It always resembled an air raid over London although I doubt that is the effect they were looking for. Perhaps my impression just matched my mood. The final project was an ongoing battle. I didn’t feel I was fully grasping the animation principles that had been thrown at me the past few months.

A day of work on Lion King production felt like a welcome vacati0n. Production work felt real and practical.

Disney Feature Animation Internship: Discovery Island

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As interns we got to go on sketching field trips.I liked Discovery Island which had a small zoo of animals to be sketched. Unfortunately Discovery Island is a thing of the past. I particularly liked sketching the howling monkeys who were always a blur of motion.

I had finished about two seconds of animation on the final project. Progress was slow. I was starting to feel the stress. Too much hinged on this one bit of animation. I never felt fully rested and my right eye was starting to twinge.

We watched The Black Cauldron which was a Disney animated film made back in the 1980s. This was a darker film from a darker time. Disney was being threatened with a corporate takeover by Steinberg. Disney ended the take over by buying back the 11.1% interest he held in the company for $300 million dollars and they added 28 million for out of pocket expenses.

Disney Feature Animation Internship: Disney Resorts

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There was a boat launch near the animation studio which was an easy way to boat over to the Disney Resorts. I liked to walk around this lake to clear my head. It was also an easy walk to Epcot. I started a series of sketched around the Epcot lagoon. The idea was that each sketch would be a full 180 degree view and lead into the next sketch so they could all work together as a scroll. That project got sidelined since I had so much animation to do.

My idea for a final project was approved and I began animating. From this point to the end of the internship I would have my head down animating full time. It is odd that I never showed these sketched to the Disney approval board. These sketches were done for myself to ground myself in reality.