Orange County Convention Center, Orlando Florida part 1

 

Orange County in Florida has a convention center so huge that it can hold three large conventions all at once with room to spare. I was there in 2001 at a biology and immunology conference called FASEB, with the laboratory of professor Madrenas. We presented two posters from my projects there. In the spare time I snuck out to make paintings around the convention center, apparently quite a bit. This one shows a sliver of the convention center with the palm tree and pylon. As I look back on these paintings done almost 20 years ago I am impressed with the range I had developed, this was after the Spain trip when I gained a lot of confidence. The pylons were a common motif (and still are to this day!). 5 x 8" cold press, watercolour, 2001

 

 

Here is another one from around the conference center. I remember setting up here to paint as the other students were heading to downtown Orlando to go to Disneyworld. Craig, Karoline and Elizabeth if I remember correctly. This painting shows an amazing colour fade on the concrete post, and a convincing fountain and water reflection. Painting fountains of water like this is tough, the best approach is to not feature it as the main theme, rather stick in the background. I see cerulean blue in a lot of the mixtures, it was the only cyan I had in my palette used in skies and shadows. 5 x 8" cold press, watercolour, 2001

 

This was another ambitious effort, overlapping the palm trees with the many windows of a hotel in silhouette. I fit in the shrubberies and the reflections in the pond at the bottom. The greens here range from golden green, to yellow green, to emerald green and sap greens. I only had PG7 phthalo green blue shade, but knew how to mix it using burnt sienna. aureolin yellow, alizarin crimson, and french ultramarine. Nowadays I use PG36 phthalo green yellow shade more, since it needs less mixing. 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, 2001

I found nine paintings from this trip, so I will make a few more blogs this week.