Crealdé in a Pandemic

Posted on by Thor

On Sunday mornings I have been instructing an Urban Sketching Class at Crealdé School of Art (600 St. Andrews Blvd. Winter Park, FL 32792). Rather than teach in the enclosed classroom, I have been instructing outside. We have been lucky with decent breezes. I did this quick demo sketch to show students how to lay out a composition and then they wandered off to do sketches of their own.

I am fascinated by the outdoor portable sinks that have been installed outside with foot pedals to turn on and off the water. The water only shoots out as a powerful geyser, there is no middle ground. I would be very curious to see the little ones using then during summer camp.

We had discussed two point perspective and the use of lights and darks in a sketch. Periodically I would walk around and find the students to check on their progress while maintaining six feet of distance. I carry a six foot staff as a visual reminder to myself and the students. It would be nice if it was a rare wizards staff, but it is just a section of molding.

All my students have all been troopers about wearing masks, though I had to lend a mask to one student who forgot one at the first class. I wear a mask and face shield to further protect my students.

First Day of Summer Camps Elite

Posted on by Thor

The first day of Elite Animation Academy summer camps began on Monday June 22, 2020. I had three students for a class that focuses on drawing people places and things. It is essentially an Urban Sketching Class with the glitch that I can not, in good conscience, take students out on locations like restaurants to sketch. I brought a six foot stick with me to class to keep a visual reminder of what six feet looks like so I could space out the students. I bring that stick everywhere I go now. It makes me feel a but like Moses parting the viral sea.

Two of my students were sisters. Everyone thankfully was wearing masks. I spoke about the pandemic to my students without focusing too much on the statistics and data of the past week.

Florida is quickly becoming the next epicenter for the spread of this virus. Florida was late to shut down and early to re-open. Governor Ron DeSantis ended all restrictions on youth activities across the state, including camps. “At the end of the day, we trust parents to be able to make decisions in conjunction with physicians.” he said. A 17 year old girl is the youngest to die from Covid-19 in Florida so far. Oh, wait, sorry, I got side tracked, I didn’t discuss any of that with my students. I kept that to myself.

I covered the basics of hand washing, social distancing and keeping the masks on. There was hand sanitizer on each table and disinfecting wipes. I advised students to wipe down every pencil or sharpener they used. My students were troopers keeping their masks on at all times. Talking through a mask was a challenge and I realized I couldn’t dash off quick sketch notes to hand off to each student. Each sketch would be contaminated in theory.

There were a few students taking a computer class and several taking a character design class and my three students. I managed to keep my students six feet apart by taking out all the chairs but four and pushing the two tables in the room to opposite walls. I then seated students at opposite ends of the tables. The tables are just short of six feet long. Most of the morning I was concerned with being sure my students were properly spaced and safe. They were troopers keeping their masks on for the whole class. I was wearing the cloth mask Pam created for me which has three layers of fabric. This was the first day I wore the mask all day and I got used to having it on. I find I breath best through my mouth and then exhale through my nose. It is surprising having to think about every breath.

Before lunch I decided to get the students out of the small classroom. It is safer to be outside rather than in enclosed spaces. We walked down to a small lake to draw. I gave then some basic composition tips with a horizon line and basic tips on how to draw trees and then let them go. I scheduled an hour for them to work but they really didn’t have the attention span yet to focus on the endless details that existed at the scene. One student delighted in drawing the ducks and a family that arrived to feed the ducks. She has the passion and it will be a joy to help her see better so she can get more on the page.

The next day the two sisters did not show up for class leaving me with one student. I may have discussed Covid-19 than was needed. So much of my attention was focused on student safety. The older sister would drop her pencil when done with a sketch as if dropping a mic. She had some talent. It is a shame she didn’t push herself. The phone for now is her world. The younger sister sneezed once. Three cheers for her mask, which did it’s job.

It is much easier to maintain six feet distance from one student rather than three.

Weekend Top 6 Picks for October 26 and 27, 2019

Posted on by Thor

Saturday October 26, 2019

10am to 6pm Free. 14th Annual Central Florida Veg Fest. Festival Park, 2911 E Robinson St, Orlando, FL. . Central Florida Veg Fest is an exciting day of colorful and educational exhibits and activities! Veg Fest is a family-friendly, dog-friendly,
alcohol-free, and smoke-free event. Veg Fest, now in its 14th year, is one of the biggest and best vegan festivals in the country!

Central
Florida Veg Fest will draw both committed vegetarians/vegans and those
who want to learn more about how veg-living enhances our health, the
planet, and its inhabitants. Come enjoy a diverse cross-section of
vegetarian cuisines and lifestyles. Discover new products and ideas from
over 200 vendors and 100 contributors
and enjoy a wide variety of presentations and food preparation demos.
Not a vegetarian? Whether you’re looking for new ideas to add color and
variety to your meals or you’re a “seasoned” vegetarian interested in
expanding your knowledge of nutritious and ethical foods, this is the
place for you. Please RSVP on the Veg Fest event page and join the Veg Fest community page for regular updates about the event. And please share these pages with your family and friends.

10am to 4pm Free. Sanford Farmers Market. First and Magnolia Sanford Fl.  


8pm to 10pm Free but get a drink or 2 and enjoy. Music Mount Dora. One Flight Up 440 N  Donnelly Street, Mount Dora FL.


Sunday October 27, 2019 

9:30am to 10pm Members $225 Non-members $275. Crealde Urban Sketching Class. First of 6 Urban Sketching classes taught by myself. Learn to sketch from subject to the environment. Classroom sessions will
focus on sketching clothed models and progress towards sketching the
model and classroom environment. Learn how to incorporate storytelling
into your sketches in our location sessions. These trips to local venues
will challenge you to use your sketchbook the way a photojournalist
uses a camera. The six-week goal is to produce finished sketches using
pencil, pen, and watercolor within two hours. Skill level: Intermediate

6 week class.

Thomas
Thorspecken (Thor) studied animation and illustration at the School of
Visual Arts in New York City. He worked for ten years at Walt Disney
Feature Animation. In 2009 he made a new year’s resolution to do one
sketch a day and share it with a worldwide community of urban sketchers
through his online site Analog Artist Digital World
www.analogartistdigitalworld.com

Suggested supplies:

  • #2 pencil with an eraser
  • 05 and 08 micron pens
  • Stillman and Birn 9 x 12 inch spiral bound sketchbook (Alpha or Epsion series)
  • Travel sized watercolor pallet (mine is a Windsor Newton with 14 color pans)
  • Pentel water brush (water goes in the handle)
  • Black Prismacolor pencil
  • Compact artist stool

    • Noon to 2pm Free. Bobby Koelble Presents Jazz in the Garden. Mead Botanical Garden 1300 S Denning Dr, Winter Park, FL.  Join
    us as we enjoy an afternoon of electric Jazz music, tasty food, craft
    cocktails, and shopping in a beautiful, serene setting all while helping
    to benefit Mead Botanical Garden.

    The shows, that will fall on the last Sunday of the
    month from September thru November, will consist of world class
    musicians performing a collection of your favorite Jazz standards with a
    twist.
    October’s concert will include two bands. The first being
    The Bobby Koelble Quartet featuring Michelle Mailhot playing from noon
    till 2pm followed by legendary Hall and Oats Saxaphonist “Mr Casual”
    Charlie Dechant and The Kings    .
    November’s concert will include an
    opening band (TBD) from noon till 2pm followed by the Music of Charlie
    Parker and Django Reinhardt performed by Bobby Koelble, Jeff Rupert and a
    cast of top notch musicians. 

    There will be food and beverages
    available for purchase, a shopping area curated by Suzette’s One Of A
    Kind Finds, as well as a limited number of VIP passes which will include
    an Italian lunch buffet catered by Bites and Bubbles and VIP restrooms.

    10pm to Midnight Free but get a coffee or bite. Comedy Open Mic. Austin’s Coffee, 929 W Fairbanks Ave, Winter Park, FL. Free comedy show! Come out and laugh, or give it a try yourself.

     

    The Heavy

    Posted on by Thor

    Now that I am instructing an Urban Sketching Class at Crealde School of Art, (600 St Andrews Blvd, Winter Park, FL 32792) I am always looking for inspiring places to sketch around Winter Park. My students advised me that The Heavy (1152 Harmon Ave, Winter Park, FL 32789) might be a fun  place to sketch. They were correct. The Heavy located in the old Lombardi’s warehouse is a fantastic coffee shop that also sells gorgeous plants and furnishings. The loading docks have been converted into luminous plant filled oasis’s.


    My students scattered about and sketched the unique setting. Several children were playing on a couch which was caught by one of my students. One member of the staff was clearly an artist herself and loved that we were capturing the ambiance with our sketchbooks. If you check their calendar online you will see weekend Home Barista workshops and an open flower bar. It seems you can learn how to make you own home just as much of an oasis.


    The Heavy seems such a strange name for a place that exudes a light and calming vibe. For much of the time while I worked on this sketch a man was getting an education in how to care for the house plant he was buying. Of course most of  my time is spent giving students ideas on composition and structure. I want to be sure that everyone gets some rough sketches from me. At the beginning of the next class I also give them all the sketches I did for each student since a note give to one student might be helpful for another. I love introducing artists to the life affirming habit of sketching daily.

    Escaping the confines of the artist studio

    Posted on by Thor

    On Sundays I teach an Urban Sketching class at Crealde School of Art (600 Saint Andrews Blvd, Winter Park, FL 32792). I have some very talented students in this class and my goal is to just loosen them up so that they can capture a scene quickly and then focus on a few details to help sell the story behind the sketch. The temperatures have finally dropped to a reasonable degree so that we can sketch outside sometimes without baking while trying to finish the sketch.

    One student showed me an absolutely gorgeous pencil rendering of some shells. It was photo real and highly detailed. The trouble with sketching on location is that a sketch must be done in the time allowed. I tend to judge when a sketch is complete based on how much by butt hurts. Perhaps that isn’t a great measure of good art but it is practical.

    So many of my lessons are about how to put multiple  people into a sketch. I usually dash off a quick sketch like this to demonstrate the principle while also circulating around and doing individualized sketched that show how “the bones” of a composition might be strengthened. By the end of the course I hope that each student will learn how to manage their time so that a watercolor sketch is completed in the time we have. My tips and techniques are mostly about how to speed up the process and focus only on the details that tell a story.

    Each of my students are unsatisfied with what they can capture n a sketch right now and I have to point out that that feeling never goes away if you really want to produce great art. As Michelangelo said, “The
    greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and
    falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our
    mark.”

    Panera and Urban Sketching

    Posted on by Thor

    On Sundays for the next 6 weeks I am teaching an Urban Sketching class at Crealde School of Art. One of the first venues we explore with or sketchbooks is Panera Bread (2516 Aloma Ave, Winter Park, FL.) Each class begins with about an hour of instruction in the classroom along with some sketching exercises to apply the new principle taught. Then we head out to sketch on location. Paneras on a Sunday morning starts off rather slow and by the time the lunch hour approaches the place becomes packed.

    This allows for a relaxed first hour to sketch the interior setting without worrying about the human element. Then as people file in we sketch people at the tables that were established in pencil. I teach the students to pay attention to how much food was ordered and how full peoples glasses are, to get a sense of how long the person might be at the table to be sketched. People come and go while the sketch is in progress and the goal is to make it seem like a moment in time had been captured. Catching fellow sketchers in the sketch is an advantage because they are on the same time table, lingering rather than rushing to finish eating and get out.

    I don’t always take the time to do a sketch myself since I circulate and give each student notes that might help them with the composition or gestures that can be caught. I  have a very talented crew of students for the next six weeks and I am excited to share my thoughts on how to capture life in a sketch. One of my students showed me a fordable devise with magnets that can be used to hod a palette and water jar. It is a smart design and I might incorporate something similar into my work flow. By teaching I often find that I learn things  as well.

    Casa Feliz

    Posted on by Thor

    This is another demo sketch from my Sunday morning Crealde Urban Sketching Class. We sketched the historic Casa Feliz (656 N Park Ave, Winter Park, FL 32789) as an exercise in perspective. I was very pleased with this group of artists they applied the principles I suggested and some amazing work was created. Each student had their own particular way of putting lines and washes on the page and that is what makes sketching a pleasure to look at. Like handwriting each artist brings their own touch to an image they create.

    Since I would walk around and offer individual notes and suggestions to each student I didn’t take much time on this sketch. I’m finding that dashing off a sketch quickly has it’s advantages. The has to look more spontaneous when you are throwing things on the page with wild abandon. Teaching students to be this careless is one of the most important lessons. When they start they want photographic accuracy, but a camera is much more suited to capture that. This is a case where teaching is making me much more aware of where my work needs to go moving forward.

    Aloma Bowl and the Frankenstein Effect

    Posted on by Thor

    On Sunday mornings I teach an Urban Sketching class at Crealde School of Art and the goal is to get the class out to sketch in the community each session. We take the first half of the class to discuss a premise and do an exercise and then we apply that lesson out in the field. I had prepared course materials for something I call the Frankenstein Effect. When drawing on location you seldom have more than 5 minuses to draw a person. On many occasions you might only have 30 seconds before the person walks away. The goal of this class was to get the students to get a very fast gesture on the page within that 30 seconds and then add details to the sketch by borrowing body parts from other people. The head might be from one person, the torso from another and the legs from yet a third. Details of fashion are also mixed an matched.

    To get started each student posed for a brief moment and we would sketch just their legs to start. The next student would pose and we would sketch the torso and a third student would pose so we could sketch their head. The results were surprisingly consistent and as an outsider you could not tell that the figures had been “Frankensteined” together.

    The Aloma Bowl (2530 Aloma Ave. Winter Park FL 32792) has bowling leagues each Sunday, so it offered a great place to sketch to sketch active poses as people bowled. One bowler was interested in buying one of my students sketches and I am trying to get them hooked up. The trouble is I’m not sure which student might have sketched him. I contacted two of them and will show him both their sketches too see if I can find the sketch he wants.