Pool Day

Things have been a bit busy here for me. I have been trying to pack for a trip. I am leaving for the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Porto, Portugal tomorrow. I am going a few days early and meeting up with the rest of my tribe who are all arriving at different times and on different days. There are sketchers coming from all over the world and there will be somewhere between 600 and 800 sketchers there. I will try my best to post while I am away. Hopefully I will remember how I did it when I was in Australia. I will be in Porto for 10 days and then traveling up to Riga, Latvia to meet family and attend my nephew's wedding there.

After packing last night and most of this morning I needed a break so I headed over to the pool in my development. I did a small sketch of some of the people in the pool.

Yesterday I went for a pedicure and sketched the people across from while I waited.

At the Beach

It was another beach day and I sat with my back to the water so I could paint these people with the umbrella up by the dunes at Smith Point Beach.

Sayville Firehouse

I have been wanting to sketch a firetruck for a while, but every time I pass by the local firehouses the doors to the bays are closed and you can't see the trucks. When I passed the Sayville firehouse the other day two of the firetrucks were outside because they were repaving in front of the bays, so the trucks were parked in the parking lot. I was painting this from the parking lot of the supermarket across the street so I didn't have a very close view and it was hard to tell what some things were. I figured it was as close as I was going to get for now.

Flo's in Blue Point

Tonight the Patchogue Sketch Club had our beginning of the summer sketch night at Flo's Luncheonette in Blue Point. Flo's has become so popular they have a second permanent location in Patchogue. This one in Blue Point is seasonal and I'm sure we will return for our end of the season sketch of it. This year they spiffed things up and got new navy blue umbrellas instead of the yellow ones. From an artistic standpoint I liked the yellow ones better. It livened up the scene more.

Alcohol Ink Tiles

Believe it or not, I didn't get any sketching done today. We spent yesterday and today visiting good friends out in East Hampton. We were too busy talking and having a good time for me to even attempt to pull out my sketchbook. Before we left on Monday to meet them I did complete a few new alcohol ink tiles so I could have them dry by the time we got back. Here are the newest ones.

Mermaid with Starfish

Blue Hills

Wave Cresting

Red Sky Beyond the Dunes

Roosevelt Island - Part 2

At the northern tip of Roosevelt Island is the Roosevelt Island Lighthouse. It was built by the convicts from the penitentiary and was made of local stone. It was designed by the same person who designed St. Patrick's Cathedral, James Renwick, Jr. and it is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

We had lunch along Main Street and sat near a church. When I finished eating I sketch the view from our spot to the water.

Finally we sat on the eastern side of the island and sketch the Ravenswood Generating Station across the river in Queens. Due to the chimney I needed to do this across a double page spread.

Roosevelt Island - Part I

Today the NYC Urban Sketchers joined Richard Alomar and a group of Landscape Architects sketching Roosevelt Island. We met near the subway and then Richard told us a bit about the history of Roosevelt Island. Like most parts of NYC it originally belonged to the Native Americans, then the British took control, later selling it to the Dutch. The island had a smallpox hospital, a penitentiary, and an insane asylum at times through its history. For a long time it wasn't a place you would want to visit, but over the years many of the buildings were abandoned. The island, like all NYC real estate was eventually renovated. Roosevelt Island is now home to lovely apartments. It is still rather isolated and connected to Manhattan by subway or tram. It is also connected to the borough of Queens by a bridge.

We started walking and went to an area that had a great view of the river and the Roosevelt Island Bridge. We were told to walk with one sketchbook and one drawing tool. We were given about 25 minutes and were supposed to do 3 sketches...one toward the bridge, one looking up north along the river and one directly ahead. I don't sketch quick enough to do 3 sketches so I used my Lamy pen to sketch the view of the bridge. There was no time to add color.

Our next stop was about midway along the western side of Roosevelt Island looking across the river to Manhattan. Rather than just doing the view of the city I included some of the sketchers sitting on the shaded bench in front of me. This was done directly in watercolor.

More to come...