Orlando Urban Sketchers went to the Orlando Cat Cafe (532 Cagen Park Avenue Clermont, Florida). When I arrived, the Cat Cafe had not opened yet, so I sat down to draw the facade. There were two foot high photos of cats in all the storefront windows.
I had to work fast on the sketch because the cafe was going to open in half an hour. It turns out you have to reserve a spot to go into the Cat Cafe. Thankfully one Urban Sketcher, Hillery Geiger, had an extra reservation, so I got in.
I got to speak with Gay Geiger about my plans to sketch in Europe for 6 month following in my father’s footsteps as a 1st Lieutenant with C-Company at the end of WWII.
I learned for the first time that Gay had followed in her fathers foot steps and had been in the military herself. My trio sounds ideal on paper, but there is an amazing amount of work I still need to do over the next couple of months to put the entirety of my life i storage so I can travel for that length of time. I am also considering going up to Sweden after my travels to study at the Florence Academy of Art Atelier. I didn’t even know how to pronounce Atelier but it would be nice to slow down and develop the careful focus needed to produce gorgeous paintings. It might seem a personal challenge to go back to drawing from casts, but I understand why it is needed.
My School of Visual Arts, New York City painting experience consisted of the instructor (Gill Stone) giving us a list of paints and brushes to buy and then letting us sit at easels to figure things out for ourselves. There has ti be so much more I could learn form hundreds of years of artists experimenting with mediums and brushed. All of my brushes are hard and mangled, as if I had tortured them. It would be nice to learn how to treat my art supplies with delicate respect.
