Plein air painters and wooden boat show

The lawn in front of the Hotel Lakeside was a busy place today. The wooden boat show and the Ohio Plein Air show were sharing space and viewers. Each year the show gets better and better. My husband is teaching at the Rhein Center this week, so after registration from 1-3 p.m. he changed clothes and went down to the lake to take kids out for a free sail boat ride. The water was perfect and about 100 kids participated. The temperature was in the upper 80s, but there was a cool breeze. Our friends Duke and Kinga from Indiana are here; we went to church together and had breakfast and dinner together before they returned to their camp at East Harbor State Park.

Lakeside 2008, Week 4 week-end

Wonderful things just kept coming. Beautiful weather (except for sailors on Sunday), the wooden boat show, the Plein Air paint out, The Golden Dragon Chinese Acrobats (27 centuries of tradition) and on Sunday, with perfect weather in the park, the Cleveland Deutscher Musik Verien German Band oom-pa'd away for a happy crowd at the bandstand. The woman on the bench next to me whispered, "This must be what heaven is like." Saturday I took in a lecture on the history of Plein Air painting by Rick Dziak; Sunday we enjoyed Rev. Jennings at the lakefront pavilion church service (he told about getting ill and going to the ER after a flight home from Europe--very timely for me); ate breakfast at the Patio Restaurant (my husband has an art display there and has sold 3 paintings); I took some walks and bike rides, and signed up for an afternoon class at the Rhein Center on "Draw Better," this coming week.

Golden Dragon Acrobat show at the Auditorium (publicity photo)
Just a few of the beautifully restored wooden boats


This young man really captured his subject with the freshness of painting on site
Jeff and Sue; he's a member of our church's Visual Arts Ministry and owns a gallery in Columbus
Enjoying the German band

The Lakeside Plein Air Paintout and Show

Because my computer was down in the middle of the month, I couldn't tell you about the Lakeside Plein Air Paintout and Art Show, July 13-15. It was great fun watching these artists work. And when they displayed their art on Sunday (you could buy a wet, fresh painting), it was during the wooden boat show. I wouldn't have thought to combine the two, but the boats were great subjects, and didn't move, and people who came to see one show also enjoyed the other. You can see the grass was a bit dry, but there have been some nice greening rains since then. From this amateur's eye, it looked like a smallish masonite board, sanded and primed offered the artist the best rigidity and hope for withstanding the changes in the weather. Although I did see one or two watercolorists, most artists were using oil, or acrylic with an extender which kept it from drying too fast. Watercolor dries quickly even in the studio, and outside, well, in a blink, so you'd better have great control.