Smith Point Marina

I love the water views we have here on Long Island. This was painted at the Smith Point Marina, just on the mainland before the bridge to Smith Point Park.

Monotype Workshop

Many branches of Urban Sketchers have been having what they call 10 x 10 workshops for their members. Other than the fact that they offer 10 of them I'm not sure where the 10 x 10 comes from. I took two of them with our NYC Urban Sketchers last year and this year I plan to take a few more. 

Yesterday my friend, Denise Markbreit who is also one of the NYC Urban Sketchers members, offered a class in monotypes at her studio in Queens. I haven't done monotypes before and I was interested in the process. We were told to bring along a few sketches to work from so I made B&W copies of a few of mine. Denise showed us samples of her prints, explained the process, and showed us how she prints them. (I didn't take notes so do not take what I say here as gospel instructions because I don't always remember things correctly. Denise promised to send us notes.) She told us we could work on acetate pieces, yupo, or clear acrylic. These surfaces are transparent enough that you can see the sketches through them. She had treated the pieces with gum arabic mixed with water that she allowed to dry. That way the watercolor or caran d'ache will adhere to the surface. She had lots of supplies for us to share.

I worked from a sketch I did in Venice the last time we were there. The first surface I used was yupo but found it was a bit difficult to see all my lines through the paper. It would have helped to use a light box to see it better but I just kept peeking under the paper to see what was there. I painted the yupo with watercolors and added a bit of caran d'ache to get some lines. When it was completely colored it was ready for printing. We worked on Canson multi media 90 lb paper that we misted, placed on top of the prepped plate, and then ran through her press.

Here is the first print from my plate.

We ran it through the press a second time and got this ghost print. This can be left as is or I can add to it to enhance it. I'm not sure what I will do yet.

Later I redid the image on the same yupo using mostly carat d'ache. This image came out stronger when it was printed. I had made sure I had a lot of the pigment on the page.

 

I also did a print of one of my sketches from Porto. Denise had told us that if direction mattered we need to be careful to reverse the sketch. I didn't think it really mattered for this image or the one above.

For this one I used a combination of mostly carat d'ache with a bit of watercolor as well as these big water-soluble pencils Denise let us use. I like the strength of the color in this one.

We were running out of time, but I did print a ghost image of this one too.

There were only 6 of us in the afternoon class so we got a lot of individual attention from Denise. We all really enjoyed the class and would love to continue with another lesson, but Denise will be moving to NC soon so I don't think she has time to work with us again. Maybe that means we need to do a road trip to Asheville once she is settled there.

Here is a photo of the happy artists at the end of the workshop.

Julie, Jeff, Benedicte, Susan, Me, Shawne and Denise

Baits Motel

My Wednesday night sketch group went out recently to a marina in Mastic Beach. I loved the name of this boathouse. It was a nice sunset but immediately after it got dark swarms of mosquitoes came out in force.

New Alcohol ink Tiles

When I got back from my trip I got a message from my friend, Debi at the Catbird Seat. My alcohol ink tiles are really selling well and she needed some new ones to replenish the stock. So for a few days I worked on new tiles. Here are a few of them.

Traveling Home

I left for the Riga airport fairly early, so I had breakfast after I went through security. There was such a cute pastry place in the terminal. I should have done a sketch of the cafe itself too but the breakfast looked too good to pass up sketching it.

The trip on Norwegian Air from Riga to Stockholm was pretty short, about 55 minutes, but I had a layover of quite a few hours at Stockholm Arlanda Airport. I was told my gate area wouldn't be open for several hours and that there were restaurants and shops down the other end of the airport. So I walked around quite a bit to get some exercise and checked things out. I did find out that Sweden doesn't use euros so I didn't have any money to buy anything. I did find a nice, interesting looking restaurant upstairs away from the craziness of the boarding gates. I sat at a table there for a long time doing these two sketches and then reading for a while.

This guy was checking his phone and snacking on something. I liked all the meats hanging from the ceiling. The restaurant was Italian.

This father and son had just finished eating when I decided to sketch them, but I was fairly sure they weren't going anywhere for a while. The boy was playing video games and the dad...checking out his phone. lol

I was there for quite a while and decided that the food that everyone was eating looked good. You ordered at the counter of the restaurant and could only pay with a charge card so I didn't need to worry about the currency. My very late lunch was pasta carbonara and a beer...not quite what I would think of as typical Swedish food. lol But it was quite good!

I walked around a little more but still had a little spare time so I found another location and sketched a few more people.

All of these were done on one single page that looks like this.

Out of all the flights I took, the flight from Stockholm to NYC on Norwegian had the strangest security. We stood in line to have our tickets and passports checked and then on another line where we were asked questions. They wanted to know where I was coming from. When I said I went to Latvia for a wedding they wanted to know the family name of the couple that got married, how long I was there and all kinds of other things. They questioned everyone thoroughly. While we waited for our tickets to be scanned I was talking to the ladies behind me. I told them I thought that now they knew more about my trip than my husband did. lol Anyway, the rest of the flight went well. US Customs had a short line and I was home on time!

Latvia Part III

When I got up the next morning I looked out my bedroom to a really nice view. I pulled out my sketchbook and did a direct watercolor of the view.

My nephew, Joe and Sebastian finally got home so they stopped by for a quick visit. Joe was doing an airport run to pick up some other people coming for the wedding so he left Sebastian with us for part of the day. Later we headed over to their place for the rest of the day. I finally got to meet Angela (the bride) and Julian, their little boy. Angela's parents were also there so it was nice to meet them too.

The next day we took Sebastian to the beach. We all had a good time. He wanted to make a sandcastle, or actually to supervise making a sandcastle. I sketched it while it was happening and he directed what went into the sketch and wanted me to include myself. lol He's quite the director.

My brother, Joe, Sebastian, Joan & Jaime

Me, my brother, Joe and Sebastian

The following day my brother, Joe, my sister-in-law, Joan, my niece, Jaime and I went into old town Riga. While they were roaming around looking at all the bears I was able to do a tiny sketch down the street.

Here are a few photos of Riga.

Joan, Jaime, and Joe

Russian Orthodox Church interior

I did manage a few more sketches done on the property where we were staying. There were some great fruit trees like this one filled with pears.

 

I believe this was an outdoor oven by the table outside.

The wedding was beautiful...on the beach.

Anglea and Joe

Angela and Joe

Joe, Angela and me

After the wedding Sebastian stayed overnight with us at the apartment. That gave him some reading time with Grammy.

On my last day we went into Riga to walk around a bit more and have dinner. We walked around the art nouveau district which had some beautiful buildings.

Joan & Jamie

This ends my visit to Latvia.

Latvia Part II

My hotel had a nice continental breakfast and they stored my luggage when I checked out at 11:00. My family was arriving on a flight that got in at 1:00 but they would have to pick up the rental car and figure out how to get to me. I suggested that I just meet them at the rental apartment since my hotel was in a pedestrian only part of the city and it would be hard to figure out where they could pick me up. We would decide once they picked up the car.

I went out to do some sketching. I went back to Dome Square where all the Buddy Bears were and sketched the view there.

 

Since I still had time before I expected to hear from them I did another sketch down one of the streets in the old town.

Here are a few more photos from Riga.

When I heard from my brother we decided that it made more sense just to go to the rental apartment which was about 15 minutes outside of Riga in Marupe. The woman at the hotel desk called a cab for me and made sure he knew where he was going...and off we went.

When we arrived at the property I didn't see my brother, but I found the homeowner who showed me where they were. There was a second house on the property and we were renting 1/2 of that. It was very nice with 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, and a living/dining room all on two floors. Like the rest of Latvia it didn't have AC but at least it had big windows that opened wide to let in light.

We were all hungry and needed groceries so we ventured out to the grocery and what seemed to be the only restaurant in the area, and not Latvian but Italian. lol The food was good and the beer was cold and we were together which was what mattered. 

My nephew who we hoped to see that day was in transit. He had gone to pickup his 7 year old son who was in Germany with Joe's ex-wife, and their flight back to Riga was cancelled. They wouldn't be arriving until the following morning, so we just hung out at the apartment for the evening.