Author Archives: Lavanna Martin

I am an oil painter that has left the studio. I paint people “live”. Most of the time, my subjects do not know that they are being painted. I travel light, and usually by bike.

Another Sketch from Spider House

August 2, 2010 – 7:45 am

Here is another sketch from my sketchbook, that I did of the punk rocker at SpiderHouse. I’m planning on going out this week for some “live” painting, so stay tuned. Also, I will let folks know where I’ll be on Twitter. You can follow the tweets either here at my blog, or on Twitter. See […]

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A Painting from the Studio

July 30, 2010 – 7:20 am

Several years ago, I took pictures of some of my daughter’s high school friends. They had joined the school’s “Enviro Club”, only to find out that it meant cleaning up the leftover trash in the cafeteria. We all had a good laugh, and it lead to me thinking about a painting series (which I usually […]

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Big-Eyed Girl at Epoch

July 16, 2010 – 9:01 am

I’m at my happiest when I can capture someone in less than ten minutes, as is the case here. She sported a summer cut, a style influenced by the French (I lived in Paris for 6 months almost 20 years ago). She had it blackened, it was straight, and shiny – a fantastic look that […]

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He was in the Corner at Epoch

July 7, 2010 – 9:44 am

My friend Lauren Hamilton Levy and I set out for Epoch yesterday, and we got lucky – we found a pretty good table. The guy next to us, in the corner, was hunkered down for a long spell. He was very thin and East Coast in appearance. (We never wear NorthFace apparel in the summer). […]

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He was Working the Crossword at the Spider House

June 16, 2010 – 11:41 am

When he very first arrived during morning rush hour, I thought that he was going to be there for a very short time. I was wrong: he was still there, four hours later. My friend, Lauren, and I moved from our table behind him, and sat where we could see his face. There were so […]

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I Painted the Two Lovely Brothers at Spider House

June 2, 2010 – 7:27 pm

My brother and I had a horrible relationship growing up. We fought constantly. We had dirt clod fights (they hurt), grass spur fights, and we broke each other’s things (I stuck my finger through the wings of his radio-controlled airplane). The fights escalated after my dad died to such a level that the neighbors called […]

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I Sketched the Tattooed Woman at SpiderHouse

June 1, 2010 – 8:30 am

She was a very pretty woman. She and her partner were conducting business with Conrad. I overhead a bit of conversation – they were talking about signage, in the fashion of the tattoo. The woman had several tattoos – the most prevalent was of a lioness.

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I Sketched the Punk Rocker at Spider House

May 18, 2010 – 10:02 am

I’ve been working; some of you may be wondering. I have formed an art club with three artist friends that I worked with at Les Amis almost 30 years ago. At our weekly meetings, we have been going to Spider House, and drawing for 4 to 5 hours. They are not into painting, so I […]

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I Painted Russian Literary Scholar Sidney Monas

April 9, 2010 – 3:30 pm

My friends Tom and Linda have known Sidney for 30 years or so. Linda actually worked for Sidney, at the University of Texas, where they published and edited a Slavic cultural journal. Retirement can cause enough isolation, but Sidney’s hearing loss trapped a man who loves intellectual exchange into a solitary world, by comparison. We […]

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Yucking It Up Quietly at Epoch

March 8, 2010 – 11:43 am

Which one was the Mastermind of this collaboration? One of them may be the boss, but the creative genius seemed to be the guy to the left. He was working on some website, and occassionally, the sophisticated guy to the right would pop up and go look over his shoulder. They would snicker and shake […]

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