Mellow Mushroom

Posted on by Thor

Crealdé School of Art is updating their gift shop and so I dropped off 5 of my books, Urban Sketching: The Complete Guide to Techniques. I signed each of the books and they are on sale in the Crealdé Gift Shop  for $20. I realize now that I should offer the books on my website as well. They can be found in any bookstore around the world in many languages, but some might want to get it from the source. I need to get used to distributing books to bookstores and gift shops and get used to keeping track of the inventory. After signing the agreement the Crealdé agreement form, I decided to get lunch at Mellow Mushroom which is just a block away from the school.

Kathy Blackmore who hired me to work at Full Sale University years ago, used to take her animation teaching staff to Mellow Mushroom once a year as a treat. I used to always order a Cosmic Karma pizza which had a delicious spread of pesto.

Kathy passed away suddenly this year and so I felt the need to go to Mellow Mushroom in her honor. Kathy was an incredible children’s book illustrator and art instructor. I am still shocked and devastated that she is gone. We worked together at Disney on Brother Bear and then I helped her at Full Sail.

In Mellow Mushroom there was a new section of mural depicting the Beatles. I think it was done by local muralist Andrew Spear. I recognize his bold line work and crosshatching style.

In college I studied painting with Gill Stone who was known for his 1960s themes illustrated album covers. When I was a student, Gill was working on a 7-foot-tall painting of Rachel Welch for Playboy owner Hugh Hefner. All the flowers, rainbows and sunbeam patters reminded me of Gills work. In Gills freshman year painting class, easels were circled up around the perimeter of the room. he simply told all the young art school students to sit at an easel and start painting. There was no technical instruction, we just did the best we could and made marks on canvas. I learned as much from my fellow students as I did from the teacher.

An artist friend has been doing a good job of convincing me that it would be nice to study at something like the Florence Atelier. Even at my late stage of life, I have much I need to learn.

My Cosmic Karma Pizza was delicious. I tend to eat too fast while I sketch. I wolf down bites so that I can lean back over the sketchbook and make more marks. I got a large chunk of cheese stuck in my throat. It wasn’t a complete blockage. I could still breathe but I felt the lump in my esophagus.  I couldn’t eat or drink any more. This had happened before. It sometimes helps to raise my hands over my head. I knew that I just needed to relax and the lump should slip down my throat. I sketched to distract myself and relax. The waitress came over and asked if everything was OK. That was a loaded question. What she meant to ask was if I wanted a box for the remaining slices of pizza I wasn’t eating. Dear God I didn’t want to choke to death on a Cosmic Karma. I considered going to the bathroom to jump up and down and try and dislodge the cheese. Just as I was about to exit my booth, I felt the mass slip its way down my throat. Thank God.

I had another slice of Cosmic Karma but took much smaller dainty bites. I also kept sketching, but not as furiously. People kept entering the restaurant and I debated about who I could get in my sketch. I did get a box for the last slice which would have stuffed me like a tick.

The Mellow Mushroom always delights.

Posted on by Thor

If I find myself on the East side of Orlando, with time to kill before sketching an event, I will often go to the Mellow Mushroom, 2015 Aloma Ave, Winter Park, FL. Kathy Blackmore, used to take the 2DAnimatio Full Sail crew to Mellow Mushroom to show her thanks and ask about suggestions for the coming year. We would usually order the Pesto Pizza Pie which had an exotic name like “Cosmic Karma.” Anytime I return, I or do the same pie. As of this December it will be a year since I left Full Sail. My new teaching gig at Elite Animation Academy is more challenging, but I’ m learning as I teach the kids. I’m teaching a course in using Photoshop to design characters and because of that, I’m using a tablet to sketch more often. The first time I used the Cintiq Companion 2, the battery died before the sketch was done. Since then I have discovered some battery saving techniques, and the battery has held on for each sketch session since. My butt usually reminds me when I’ve been sitting and sketching for too long. The battery now outlasts my butt.

Sexual Harassment

Posted on by Thor

All the Full Sail staff were required to take a seminar which outlined Full Sail’s policies on Sexual Harassment. Kathy Blackmore invited her crack team of instructors from 2D Animation to meet for lunch at Mellow Mushroom on Aloma before the seminar. It’s always nice to get together as a crew to laugh, gossip and discuss ways the course might be improved over time. My Hawaiian pizza was delicious. As a crew we then arrived at Full Sail live before anyone else showed up. The back rows were the first to fill up. There was plenty of uncomfortable joking about harassment and slowly the room filled. I left the 2DA crew, thinking I might sketch from the front row. Kathy informed me that much of the presentation would be a video, so I changed my focus and decided to sketch the growing crowd.

Sexual Harassment is bad. It was defined as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors or verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. A lawyer went through his 29 power point slides being sure to read each of the bullet points. About 70% of women and 20% of men have experienced sexual harassment. About 15,000 charges are filed each year. The bottom line was that Full Sail employees must report all harassment if they are aware of it to the Human Resources department or a quick call to the Full Sail president.

The video showed a fictitious court case in which a female employee was filing a sexual harassment charge. She met a guy at a company picnic and they talked. She let slip that she used to work for a 900 number. The audience murmured. The guy kept asking her out and she declined. He parked outside her home one night for several hours. She contacted HR and they suggested the guy stop. He didn’t. Eventually the guy was fired, but the woman got cat calls from the rest of the shipping department. She decided she had to leave.

The Full Sail staff were asked to break up into groups of six to act as juries. The interesting thing about the video is that the case left room for interpretation about weather HR had done enough to stop the harassment. The juries all agreed that she was the victim of sexual harassment. They varied widely in the matter of how much to offer in damages. One jury offered $300 in compensatory damages, $300 in punitive damages and $300 in back pay. The video jury offered $75,000 in damages. Larry Lauria on the 2DA jury offered 10 million dollars in damages, but it was a hung jury because no one could agree on the final amount.

Mellow Mushroom

Posted on by Thor

Every Monday night at about 8:30PM the Mellow Mushroom (11680 East Colonial Drive), holds an event called Drink & Draw. I heard there was prize money for the best sketch, so I couldn’t resist going out for a pizza in the name of art. A waitress seated me at a booth at the edge of the room. I didn’t notice any sort of staging area so I asked her about the event. She pointed to the sound system set up on the opposite side of the room. She said a DJ would announce the contest and then a model would pose on some chairs for 3 five minute poses. The prizes were as follows:
1st place would be a $25 Mellow Mushroom gift certificate.
2nd place would be a $10 Mellow Mushroom gift certificate.
3rd place would be a Wild Garlic Ball appetizer.
I ordered a vegetarian pizza with the works and a Mountain Dew. The announcer walked around to all the tables and handed out paper and pencils. I took a sheet of paper to be polite but I had already started the sketch in my sketchbook. The model, dressed as Bat Girl stood on a couple of chairs and took heroic poses. The lighting left her in the darkness and with so many tables in front of me I seldom had a clear view of her. I finally had to get up and walk to the front of the room. I leaned up against a 10 foot tall fiberglass mushroom and quickly jotted down her pose. When it came time to judge I of course was still adding watercolor washes. I didn’t win anything since I was still at work.
KC arrived and joined me for a second round of sketching. She ordered a soda and I offered her some of my pizza which I couldn’t finish. The second model was dressed as a rock and roll musician and she held a guitar. I was still working on the color washes but this time I took perhaps a minute each to jot down the poses. I wasn’t inspired by the stiff poses and the drawings sucked. KC moved to a closer table and worked diligently while I went back to my sketchbook. When the prizes were announces for the second set of poses, KC was the grand prize winner. She used the certificate to pay for the pizza and drinks so my sketching adventure that night cost me nothing!