Mother Daughter Dinosaur Paint Out

You can say Leela and Aleada Siragusa are the Melissa and Joan Rivers Mother-Daughter Team of Plein Air Art. For those of you who do not know the term, plein air simply is French for painting or drawing out of doors from life. 

 Here Leela and I are geared up and ready to paint and draw.

My daughter, Leela and I often get out into nature and create our art together. Leela is professional 3D artist working in environments specifically for video game art.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 - Xbox 360 - Scottsdale

Leela's name is on 6 of the Tiger Woods PGA Tour Games.

There is nothing better than being able to paint and visit with my wonderful daughter, I am so proud of her and I’m so grateful we share so much.

 We are at the old entrance to Dinosaur World.

We have annual tickets to Dinosaur World, a charming theme park with over 150 life-sized Dinosaurs in a lovely Florida landscape. These Dinosaurs are just waiting for the opportunity to pose for the people who dare to venture through a woods filled with toothy Mesozoic creatures.

 Guy, my husband  who is also Leela's father comes with us; here he is amusing himself.

Leela has always been a fan of the dinosaur and every time we drove past the dinosaur at exit 17 on I -4 in Plant City Florida, she would say how she wanted to see Dinosaur World. Aside from the large-scaled dinosaurs the park has information on each featured Dinosaur, educational videos, fossil digs, picnic areas, a great gift shop, and this Wednesday they are opening a new dinosaur museum.

 As you can see by this photograph, these dinosaurs are life sized.

There are three Dinosaur World Theme Parks in the USA.

The first day we visited the park we visited we didn't have much time to create art because of the size of the park and educational information put out on each dinosaur took most of our time. We were so excited with the opportunity to paint dinosaurs in nature, though late in the day. I started a painting and Leela drew and finished a ink drawing with watercolor and pastel.

  
We came back another day when Leela drew another ink picture and I finished the painting I started.

I am using a small watercolor 24 pan set of Koi Watercolor, a water brush, and Escoda Travel Brushes.

Above is my first Dinosaur, a Saltasaurus painted in watercolor which I finished on our second day to the park.

Leela found this small colorful Utahraptor dinosaur among the ferns. She used ink, watercolor and pastel on the picture above.

 Later Leela decided to draw the Saltasaurus Dinosaur with an emphasis on the waterfall.

Leela drew this Saltasaurus Dinosaur the second day while I was finishing my painting.

Here is a close up of the picture as she draws it.  She is currently working in ink, and also at times, watercolor and pastel.

The third day there we stopped to pose for a family portrait with the Ceratosaurus Dinosaur which I was planning to add too my next painting. Back for another visit with more time than we allowed for our last visit.

 

Below I am standing to get a better view of the Ceratosaurus Dinosaur for my painting.

Here I am with my pensive look studying my composition, the setting, light, and dinosaurs. With me is my little toy poodle, Basil, which Guy took for a long walk while we painted.

I knew I would paint the blue small dinos, the Tanystropheus in the ferns with the fierce Ceratosaurus approaching in the distance.

This is Leela looking at her Dinosaur on the opposite side of the path from me.

She chose to draw an ink view of these Massospondylos dinosaurs among the ferns.

Above are the dinosaur sculptures I drew which are located at the first courtyard when you enter Dinosaur World. The tall necked Dinosaur is missing his name sorry but the large one on the right is the  Acrocanthosaurus and the one just below it is a Juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex. I drew them while I waited with the dog for Leela and Guy to get out of the new museum. As I mentioned before, they are life sized and very realistic which of course, you can see in this drawing. Since these are in the courtyard they are on a  mowed lawn with a plain building in the background which I chose not to include.  It would would have cluttered the design.

Here I am drawing from a picnic table outside the museum with the Acrocanthosaurus in the background. On this day we attended the opening of the Dinosaur museum. 

I will share more of our art from our paintouts soon; so please visit again, Aleada Siragusa