Beach Waves

Another nor'easter was far off the coast here. It brought us strong winds, pounding surf, and coastal erosion. I hadn't been down to the ocean since before the last storm so I headed over to Smith Point Beach to see the effects. Directly in front of the concession stand and the beach staircase the dunes are completely gone. Here off to the side there are a few dunes, but the beach has been shortened a lot. The waves were pretty strong and had a nice spray so I sat and painted this view.

This is what the erosion looks like in front of the concession pavillion. At high tide the water goes under the stairs.

Inktober Day 19

 Today's prompt for Inktober was "high contrast: black vs white. The shadows on Bellport Lane heading to the town dock looked perfect for this.

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Vineyards and Inktober Day 18

I headed out to the north fork of Long Island to sketch and paint on Sunday. My first stop was Paumanok Vineyards because I know I can get close to the vines with no problem. I did this directly in watercolor. 

I needed to do some ink sketches for Inktober. The theme was overlapping objects. I stopped at Jason's Vineyard in Jamesport. First I sketched the view of the vines at the pack of the parking area. I took a photo of it and then added color.

They had a nice seating area outside with tables and umbrellas. People seemed to be having a good time over there. I did an ink view and then colorized it.

Halloween Parade

The NYC Urban Sketchers headed to the Tomkins Square Halloween Dog Parade last weekend. My friend, Susan was hosting and we started out at the location where the marchers were lining up. We had about an hour before the parade was actually starting so we hoped we would be able to sketch a bit before it got too crowded. Catwoman and her cat dog were the first ones there so I was able to sketch them and the vehicle. I was sitting on my stool so I was looking through the bars of the barricade. The doggie wearing the tutu was there early, but she didn't like staying in one spot and her owner moved around a lot too. 

The crowd behind us got bigger as the morning went on and at one point Susan couldn't see anything from her chair so she said she was going to try moving to another spot. That didn't work well for her at all and I think she ended up being frustrated because she didn't get to sketch much of anything. After several phone calls the two of us met up and planned to go into Tompkins Square Park and meet up with any other sketchers who showed up. That was where our show-and-tell was supposed to take place. But when we walked over to the park security told us that nobody was allowed to come into the park because that's here all the marchers were ending up. Security was trying to get everyone out of the park. We didn't have a way to contact anyone else so Susan posted on FB that there would be no show-and-tell because the park was closed. It turned out there were about 8 sketchers in the park sitting near each other. They had their own show-and-tell and actually were able to sketch a few of the dogs from the parade.

Susan and I were tired and sort of lost our ambition to sketch by that point. We needed to get away from the huge crowd and we ended up walking quite a ways over to Union Square Park on 14th Street. We sat in the park for a while and then went to get some water at Whole Foods before heading home.

It was a fun experience trying to sketch that crazy crowd...but I don't think I would do it again!

Inktober Day 17

 Today's prompt was "use three values." I found a Bronco in the parking lot when I went shopping. It was perfect for a black brush pen, a gray brush pen and the white of the paper.

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Inktober Day 16

 

With a prompt of "frames" I wondered if the frames themselves would be the items being sketched or what was in them. Since I sketch mostly from life and en plein air I did a live subject. I headed over to Islip Town Beach because even though it is fall, today's temperature nearly reached 80. There was a collection of about 30 gulls on the sand near where I was parking. Before I could even think about getting out of the car raindrops started falling...slowly at first but with more intensity after a while. So I sat in my mobile studio and designed a few frames. Then I filled each with a sketches of gulls.

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Inktober Day 15

 "Snippets" was the prompt today for Inktober. I know that at this time of year Bellport has their scarecrows hanging so I headed there. These are all small...no larger than 3 x 4. Two are fun scarecrows for the contest...Red Riding Hood and Serial Server. Notice I added a bit of color to Red. Her coat definitely needed the color. The pumpkins and the corn stalk as well as the welcome anchor were on display in front of Porters on the Lane.

#inktober #inktober2026