Elephants Again!

The weekend after my Posca workshop the NYC Urban Sketchers scheduled sketching the Elephant Migration that I had sketched the week before. I really didn't want to sketch them again,  but my friend, Susan wanted to go. She convinced me to go into the city with her...but my plan was to sketch the surrounding area, not the elephants. We got there really early because I knew how crowded it was the week before. Well, once I saw them all in a line with out a huge crowd, I had to do one sketch...right? It ended up being a parade of elephants across a double page spread in one of my smaller sketchbooks. Sketching all the elephants and the area around them took a lot of time.

OK, I was done with the elephants! Looking around I was attracted to the yellow signs around Serafina, a popular restaruant which was constantly busy.

Around 3:00 we gathered together for our "show and tell." There were about 40 sketchers, so it took quite a while to go through everyone. One of our sketchers sold one of her elephant sketches to a tourist. 

Some of the sketch groups do a "throw down" where each person selects one sketch to put down on the ground to be viewed. We walk around our circle of sketchers and show our work. I like our way of doing it better. People can show multiple sketches if they want, you know who the sketch belongs to, and the sketcher can tell a bit about what they did and the materials they used. Here I am showing my elephants.

Below is a photo of the group of elephants that were my models for the day.

Elephants, Elephants, Elephants

 When I finished the Posca workshop (see the post below) I had lunch with a few of the sketchers. Then I wanted to go sketch the Elephant Migration in the Meatpacking District. Even though the NYC Urban Sketchers planned to sketch this the following weekend, I wanted to sketch it while I was in the neighborhood.

This is an impressive installation of 100 life-sized elephants that is aiming to raise money and awareness for the animals. The elephants are scattered throughout the Meatpacking District mostly along Ninth Avenue around 14th Street. Each of the elephants is unique and is an exact replica of a real elephant now freely roaming on plantations in parts of Southern India. A group of 200 artisans spent years making the sculptures in India where they have shown that humans and animals can live harmoniously in the same space. The elephants are made of lantana, an invasive weed that is taking over forests and displacing wildlife. 

I got there about 3:00 and it was so crowded. I tucked myself against a planter and a sign so I wouldn't get trampled. There were so many people surrounding the sculptures that I could barely see them. I sketched a few and then headed off to Penn Station for the trip home.