A Busy but Fun Weekend

Today is recovery day from a busy weekend of events. Friday, my wife Susan and I drove to Dunedin FL to set up her booth of ceramics for the Dunedin Fall Harvest Festival. She remained for the weekend with friends and I returned to Orlando.

Saturday, I was at the studio early to prepare for an exhibit of auto art at a gala connected to the Winter Park Concours http://www.winterparkconcours.com/ I drove to Orlando Sanford International Airport and a tricked out airplane hangar where the party was being hosted. This was a great spot for a party if you are a guy or a fast-machine type of gal. The hanger was outfitted with a beautiful ceramic tile floor, chandeliers, murals, and antique airplane propellers. Parked inside was a seaplane, an aerobatic plane, a couple of light aircraft and fast classic European cars. There was a huge bar, a den with flat screen... The ultimate man cave. Outside several business jets and high performance aircraft were parked. Cessna had flown a Citation V from Wichita with corporate pilots to represent the company.

It turned out I was missing a couple of critical items to hang my show of paintings so I called my lovely daughter Michelle who bailed me out by driving to the studio and then the 20 miles to Sanford.

She braved the aircraft on the taxi ways to deliver my tools and then we drove back to Orlando to clean up for the evening. Michelle was my companion and drew lots of attention in her "little black dress". We wined, dined, and mixed, then I sweated the auction of my poster painting. Watching a handful of people set the value of your career in two and a half minutes is not fun to witness. I was relieved to see it fetched more than I charged the clients to paint it but I like to be far away when these things go on the block.

Michelle and I hung out till everyone was going home and I resumed my normal scruffy persona to load the cargo van full of art, lights and display panels. Arrival home was close to midnight.

Sunday morning I unloaded the van from the night before, then on to the Concours on Park Avenue where I met up with a few good friends. Later, it was back on the road for the 120 miles to Dunedin.

Show sales for Susan were decent by the standards of 2009, and we felt grateful. The wind was a concern most of the weekend for the exhibitors there since Hurricane Ida is threatening us but we escaped unscathed by around 6:30. We grabbed dinner before leaving town, and fortified by a lot of un-sweet tea, it was back on the road.

Today another van-load of art show is awaiting my attention, so I guess the weekend is not finished.

Winter Park Concours Painting

The Winter Park Concours d'Elegance painting is finished and out the door for photographing. The image will be used for the poster and other promotional tools. The accompanying image shows the finished piece. It is good to see it gone though it was satisfying to work on. I'm back on the landscape beat now. Two shows coming and the first is in less than two weeks.

Cut Chop Rebuild

It's time for this year's poster image for the Winter Park Concours d'Elegance. I have provided the oil painting for the poster for 5 or 6 years now. It's got me worried I'm priced too cheap.

Actually its a fun project and it gets me out of my landscape painting box for a week or so.

This year I had an idea come to me almost immediately. Usually there is danger in that. But I let it rest for a couple of days while I considered it. Hey, I thought it still worked, and the client liked it - so off we go.

I wanted a new vantage point rather than the same view of the outside of a car. The featured marque this year is Mercedes Benz and in particular a new Mercedes SLR model. I wanted to show the heritage of the old 1955 300SL Gullwing Mercedes along with the new scissor door model SLR. So I put together some photos I had taken of the Gullwing at Amelia Island FL early this year, using a couple of spy shots of the new SLR and some shots of the local landmark, Knowles Chapel at Rollins College here in Winter Park FL.

Usually lots of sketching is involved but with Photoshop I cut and pasted everything together to make the composition. Here are the beginnings of the project. The photos are assembled and composed on Photoshop, the sketch projected and drawn on canvas and the first paint applied. I'll post more progress as it happens.