Astoria Park - Part 2

 After my first sketch in Astoria Park I slowly walked up to where we were meeting for lunch. That is a special time because in the morning most of the sketchers are scattered all over and usually you don't know all the members that are actually there. But most of them do show up for lunch! It was great to see everyone and catch up with them.

After lunch I returned to the same location as before but I turned toward the opposite direction. This is the view looking through underneath the Triborough Bridge. Of course NYC isn't NYC without a touch of graffiti, so I included that where it was on the wall.

I always love to sketch other sketchers at work. Mark was seated nearby and was sketching the same view of Hell's Gate Bridge that I posted yesterday.

Someone snapped a photo of me sketching Mark.

At 3:00 we met up again for "show & tell." There were about 20 of us there on Saturday and it is always fun to see the variety of sketches from the same location. Lewis always takes photos of each member with at least one of their sketches.

The day was a lot of fun, but I was exhausted. My sketching stamina isn't what it once was because I'm out of practice sketching all day. My hip felt OK on Saturday, but I knew I had overdone the walking at the park. (Walking to the ladies room was farther than I remembered.) On Sunday I could feel that I had done too much...but I think it was worth it.

Astoria Park - Part I

 On Saturday the NYC Urban Sketchers were meeting in person at Astoria Park in Astoria, Queens. With all that had happened with Jerry and then the restrictions from Covid 19 I haven't been able to join the sketchers in person since some time in December of 2019. This was an opportunity that I really wanted to take advantage of because it is a location that we can drive to easily and there is parking. Also it would be a somewhat shorter day of sketching and I could leave Jerry for part of the day. I texted my friend, Suzala to see if she was going and she volunteered to drive if I came to her house. My only hesitancy was the amount of walking it might involve. I had been there before to sketch and knew what the park was like.

It was so great to see the other sketchers! There were probably about 20 of us that showed up and for quite a few of us this was our first meeting since Covid. We've seen each other at Zoom events but not in person. My feeling is that there is a possibility that if the Covid cases start rising again we may be restricted again, so I definitely wanted to do this now while we could. Several of us picked a spot that was along the East River which has views of two bridges, the Triborough Bridge (which I didn't sketch this time) and Hell's Gate Bridge which is below.

We took a break for lunch and some catching up...but I had to walk back up the hill to our meeting location which was worth the hike.