I went to Venetian Gardens in Leesburg Florida with a friend to paint. We made the mistake of getting to the gardens right before sunset. The golden hour light illuminated the far shore of the lake a golden orange. Two fishermen were out in small boats pulling in the last of their catch. It was a beautiful scene but we had to work supe fast to try and catch it.
The second it got dark, the mosquitos came out with a vengeance. We both scrambled to pack up our art supplies while getting bitten from all angles from clouds of mosquitos. I don’t even mind getting bitten, I just hate when the mosquitos buzz into my ears. I swear that every mosquito takes a kamikaze run at my ears. Hitting myself on the side of the head to try and kill the culprit is useless and deafening.
We both managed to get something 0n the page in the limited time we had. I of course would have liked more time to mix richer colors. I am considering making changes to my daily sketch kit to include gouache colors which can be applied opaque. With watercolors I can cover the page quickly with thin washes but there are times when I want to paint lights back into the sketch or mix rich pure colors. My watercolor palette is always rather dirty so finding pure color is a challenge.
In this same park there was a magnificent Christmas light display. Lights would flicker on and off in tempo with the music, and a series of reindeer would turn on in sequence making it seem like they were galloping across a bridge. I wanted to return to do a digital sketch of that display but I never got around to it. There were a few magical places to sketch in Lake County, but I have returned to downtown Orlando to search for the types of events that I have loved to sketch for years. I am on a sketching staycation in Thornton Park right now. I am staying at AirBnBs each week and walking downtown to explore and sketch. My goal is to stay in Orlando long enough to sketch the Orlando International Fringe Festival in May.