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

Heaven, I'm In Heaven

Guy’s Mother passed away in the spring of 2010 She was healthy until about a month before she died at the age of 95. We just sold the house and were packing this weekend the last of her things.

I want to share this personal account:

Guy got his Mom’s stereo to work, it's a lovely old piece of furniture with a great sound. He got the record part to work and was saying to himself, “I wish I got this to work when you were alive Mom but I hope you are in Heaven listening”, then he randomly took the needle and put it on this old Frank Sinatra record and he heard Frank sing, "Heaven, I'm in Heaven".

Later he found out it was from a song, Dancing Cheek To Cheek.

I found one life drawing I did on her when she was alive and healthy, I believe she was reading at the time. She always was always in perpetual motion and had a figure like a girl most of her life.

 I have also included here are some sketches I did of  my husband Guy and one large pastel painting incidentally these were also created from life, not using a photograph.

Love and Anger

Self Portrait, ball point pen

While navigating the BFA program at the University of Akron, my best friend Connie Morris used to say that she liked people who had a little “rot around the edges”. I love her and that quote. Being an outcast and having come from an abusive family into a former marriage of abuse; I experienced firsthand the reactions of people not able to grasp the irony and insights of those of us who are odd and left out.

Watercolor by Connie (Morris) Wilson

 I lost touch with Connie (Morris) Wilson but I was sorry to hear from a friend that she died at age 51, leaving three sons and grandchildren. Her husband Richard Wilson preceded her.

Perhaps it’s the time we take to tear our souls apart and display those darker pieces which are most moving and helpful to the world. Guernica by Pablo Picasso may just be his greatest piece and I am sure his darker nature enabled him to create such a moving work.

Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso; the Spanish Civil War 1937

We love the movie that takes us through the depths of despair, sometimes to lift us up, but not always; often we are faced with unanswered resolutions; so we must seek the light ourselves.

Abuse is often covered up by lace curtains in the finest homes. We make panhandling illegal in Tampa Florida but offer no alternative care for the homeless who may be plagued with mental illness or drug addiction. 

Who does not love the sunset and the pretty women in fine dress? But who reaches deep within their themselves and speaks the unspeakable in picture to get the soul to listen, to be aware and not sweep images that move the soul to action under the rug?

I will rise to the challenge in the best way to love God, to look, to feel, to show compassion and not to turn away.

As the poet Carl Sandberg says, "Even God gets tired of too much hallelujah”.

Go Tell It On The Mountain

 

Mega Con: Drawings and Watercolors

Each spring the most beautiful and interesting people and life forms from this universe and beyond, gather to celebrate at Mega Con, Orlando Florida. 

Mega Con is a big costume party mainly for adults. There are comic book artists, all sorts of interesting things to buy, and celebrities and seminars. I saw Lieutenant Uhura of Star Trek fame last year, and this year Stan Lee of Marvel; a comic book legend.

I have posted a several art pieces I did from Mega Con: I will be posting more at a future date, so please visit again.

Like my Facebook page or e-mail me and I'll let you know when I post more work from Mega Con. 

The 4 drawings below were all done at home from photographs I took at Mega Con.

Pen & Ink; Watercolor Journal is the  sketchbook I used. I like the texture of the pages (8x5.5 inch landscape) 
 

Below are watercolor paintings done on Canson Montval, cold press paper 9"x12".

Leela as Pokemon with Teen Rocket  by Aleada Siragusa

Below are quick pencil sketches done from life while at the festival.

Below are sequential scans of a painting in progress.

Painted on Canson Montval, cold press paper 9"x12"