Related to Exercise

 A prompt for the Creative Spark Scavenger Hunt was "related to exercise." I pass this banch of LA Fitness in Patchogue quite often and it fits the bill.

Workmen

 There has been a lot of road and utility construction going on all over this area. Recently I spotted a group of workers digging and doing something on one of the corners of my street. Of course there were a lot of workmen, but it seemed like only two were doing anything. lol

Cherry Trees

We are lucky to still have some cherry trees in bloom here. These were in Oakdale. 

Gardener

One of the promps for the Creative Spark Scavenger Hunt was "having to do with gardening." I took a ride over to Mama Farm owned by the actress, Isabella Rossellini in Brookhaven. Imagine my excitement to find a young woman actually sitting with flats of plants to go in the field. What a find! 

Continuous Line Practice

The Creative Spark Scavenger Hunt date was coming to a close so I decided to put some of the items into one still life and do a continuous line. The items were something in a box (toothpicks), used for cleaning (Simple Green), used for cooking (wooden spoon), soft or squishy (the duck), smooth (the Keenex box), and crunchy (tortilla chips).

Workshop "From Sketches to Stories"

The NYC Urban Sketchers offers some workshops each year. Shawne Cooper, a friend of mine was offering what sounded like an interesting workshop called "From Sketches to Stories." It involved not only sketching but writing too. I decided to join in. The original location was supposed to be the Elizabeth Street Garden, but rain was forecast for the day, so a decision was made to hold the workshop at Pier 57, a very welcoming indoor location looking out at Little Island.

Shawne showed a variety of her sketchbook pages where she used writing to correspond with her sketch. We were given a page of photos of planting arrangements (pots, urns, etc) from Elizabeth Street Garden. Using tempera sticks we blocked in a solid shape for the item we chose. Once it was dry our assignment was to fill the solid area with our reaction to the change in location. This we did with marker on the shape we had created. Here is mine.

The next assignment was to look at Little Island and come up with a few things that it reminded us of. The structure of the park reminds me of tall champagne glasses. Our goal was to write about some memory that this reminded us of and write about that. Of course we did a sketch of Little Island and what it reminded us of and then we wrote about that memory. I combined the Little Island design with a champagne glass, a champagne bottle, and a bit of the ocean.

When we were finished each sketcher shared her/his page with the group. It was really interesting to hear the stories that were created by each person.

In case you have never seen Little Island, this is what it looks like in real life.

We did one more very quick activity and then took a few photos.

The group at work inside Pier 57

Grand Concourse at Grand Central

 The architecture and the assortment of people at Grand Central could keep me sketching for quite a while and it never gets old. I like sketching the view with the tunnels receding to the various tracks, subway lines, as well as the LIRR and Metro North trains. We had a good number of sketchers since it was a good location where we could sketch and stay dry. The guards had several rules including no sketching while sitting on the stairs and no sketchbooks could be on the floor while we were painting. Most of us bring along a stool to sit on and usually paint holding our sketchbooks in our laps. It works well.