Heading East

It was a mild day today and I decided to go capture some color before it is gone. I headed down to South Country Road in East Patchogue again, this time heading east. A lot of the trees that I painted the other day have lost the bulk of their leaves but this spot looked pretty good. Since it is a narrow road with not much leeway on the sides I opted to do this from my "mobile studio."

Starbucks Stop

We have had two days of damp, chilly weather. Yesterday I had a meeting in the morning and I couldn't come up with a place to sit in the car and sketch through the raindrops. So I made a stop at Starbucks in Patchogue. It is easy to park there and there are always people who hang around for a bit who make great models.

Oscar Wilde Restaurant

Most of the time when the NYC Urban Sketchers meet we end the sketching day around 3:00 and have a "show and tell." Sometimes we meet outdoors but more often than not we head to a local watering hole for a drink and maybe a bit of food. We have gone to some interesting places...some dives, some rather expensive places, some dark places not too conducive to showing your work, and then there was the Oscar Wilde Restaurant. It boasts that it has New York City's longest bar at 118.5 feet, featuring Carrara marble and gold draft taps across the length of the restaurant. Their whiskey bar is a repurposed 1819  player piano, and home to over 300 varieties of whiskey. There is gold and glitz everywhere!!! If you would like to see some photos here is a link.

We had about 14/15 people meet there at the end of the day. Immediately everyone took out their sketchbooks because they had to capture something of our ornate surroundings. I did a sketch of the bar area that was facing me as well as a few of my sketching friends. It was really difficult to focus on a small area because the place is just so overwhelming.

Sketchers love to share and are usually so willing to let each other try pens, inks, papers, etc, so I always come away with something I want to buy. lol Rob Sketcherman and his wife joined us for drinks and he let people try the program he uses on the iPad Pro. He was just so generous and willing to share what he does and how he does it. It was a real pleasure meeting him. If you are interested in seeing some of his work here is a link to his blog.

High Line Sketches

I got to the High Line area earlier than our meeting time but Mark, our organizer was already down at street level sketching. It had stopped drizzling but was blustery and a bit cold. I was wearing several layers but decided I needed a hat too. Luckily there was a street vendor with a cart selling hats and scarves...perfect. I sat down and did a small sketch of the view down the street. The small sketches are probably about 2 x 2 1/2 inches long.

A few other sketchers arrived including a visitor from Maine and we headed up to the High Line, a raised greenway build on a former rail spur to the NY Central Railroad.  We were in luck because there were lots of fall colors on the trees and bushes...but it was very windy! I thought ahead and brought clips to hold my sketchbook pages down so they didn't keep blowing. This sketch was done in just watercolors.

We had another urban sketching visitor, Rob Sketcherman and his wife who were here from Hong Kong. Rob is a well-known digital artist who works on an iPad Pro using Procreate. He was in NYC because he had done a presentation at the Apple Conference that took place this past week. He is a digital sketching master and has taught at several of the Urban Sketching Symposiums. Here he is at work. 

Before we moved off to lunch I had enough time to do another quick small sketch.

More about our day tomorrow.

Train Passengers

Today I went into the city on the Long Island Railroad to meet up with the NYC Urban Sketchers. On the way in I had a great view of these 3 ladies. From what I gathered from their conversation today was the birthday of the lady in the middle. I think the two on either side were daughters and seated directly across facing them were two granddaughters. I showed them the sketch before we got off the train and they were laughing that I sketched the one on the left eating her bagel. lol
#momentsketchers

Tomorrow I will post the other sketches from the day.

Brookhaven Fall

It was damp and rainy for most of today with a few clear periods of time. I drove to Brookhaven and parked in front of a field. I liked the color of the trees as well as the autumnal grasses.

Autumn Colors

It seems like overnight and the autumn colors popped. Yahoo!!!  The color is still in selected areas but this is the first true impressive color we have seen here on Long Island this season. When I saw the touches of color this morning I took a ride over to South Country Road in East Patchogue which usually has these impressive red/orange colored trees. They didn't disappoint today! Even though the temperatures were very mild for November I sat in my car (with the windows open) to paint because I was on a fairly busy street. As I told a photo to post this on my blog I noticed I forgot to paint the double yellow stripe down the center of the road...right now it is white.