Christmas Light Display.

Posted on by Thor

I pass this place just about every day on my drive downtown. Every time I go by it seems like there is something new in the yard.  The house is located on Peel Street, just north of East Michigan Street.  I started this sketch before the sun set, and then started painting when the home owner drove into the driveway and turned on the lights.  She wandered the yard setting things up that had fallen over during the day.  A snowman’s head was put back on his shoulders and a small Christmas tree was righted.

A gentleman on a bike asked about the sketch and explained that he was an artist himself.  He said that the home had recently been featured on TV News as one of Orlando’s best Christmas light displays.  This neighborhood is ripe with outlandish Christmas displays.  With the advent of inflatables, many lawns are covered with giant Santas and snowmen. This lawn had an inflatable Yoda and Santa.  The igloo was made of sheer fabric stretched over a dome-shaped frame.  There were other items just out of frame like a fireplace with stockings hung with care.

After the sun set, the temperature dropped and I painted faster so I could drive home for some warmth.  A hot cocoa and soup thawed me out. The next night I drove by, the lighting display was off, the yard dark.  Perhaps they saw the power bill and decided to ration the Christmas joy. 

A quite New Year’s Eve.

Posted on by Thor

On New Year’s Eve, I ventured out right at sunset to do one last sketch of holiday decorations. I drive past this house every day and the lawn is covered with flaccid piles of plastic. The plan was to go to Drip for New Year’s Eve, so I wanted to get the sketch done early so that I could just be social a the party. Rudolf’s head rotated left and right surveying the scene. There was an inflatable manger as well, but it was partially inflated, y it was hard to figure out who was who. The helicopter rotor kept turning, but sadly the minions didn’t slide down the slide that looked like a high healed shoe.

A woman, whom I had startled on a previous sketch outing walked by with her dog, Shadow, and l presume her daughter and possibly her mother. She asked if I was an artist and when l responded, “yes I am”, she replied, “Well isn’t that nice. ” It was nice to see a family going out for an evening stroll together. A dad and his daughter walked by and he made some remark, suggesting his daughter should fly the helicopter. Fireworks burst in the distance, possibly from Sea World or Disney. Smaller fireworks were also being shot out over the lakes in the neighborhood.  I was actually sweating the entire time I sketched. Winter seems to have forgotten Orlando this year.

Instead of going out, I took a long hot bath to relax. Zorro our pet cockatoo sat on a wicker basket on the bathroom sink counter. When I slipped into the tub, he got curious and marched over. The counter overlooked the tub,and he stood at the edge and bowed his head down looking like he wanted to jump in. Now, a cockatoo isn’t like a duck, they don’t have webbed feet and they can’t swim. He changed his mind, and instead grabbed my eye glasses and threw them in the tub to spite me. I splashed water on him, and he didn’t like that one bit. He backed up, but a portable mirror on the counter got in his way. Trying to back up around it, he slipped and fell off the counter. He flapped his wings to cushion the fall, and ended up flying directly into the tub. I scooped him up before he went under water, but he got soaked. I put him back on the counter, and he marched back to the safety of his basket. When he perched on the wicker handle, he lifted a soaking wet claw and looked at it in confusion as water dripped from his talon. He certainly helped make the final moments of the year unexpectedly entertaining.