Rainy Day Sketching at the Rubin Museum

My first weekend home after the trip I joined the NYC Urban Sketchers in the city at the Rubin Museum on 17th St.

My friend, Susan and I got into the city early on Saturday before the Rubin Museum was open and met up with another sketcher, Mark at Whole Foods on 14th Street. He had snagged some great seats right by the window upstairs so we had a good view to sketch while we dried off and had some coffee.

Here is my sketch of Union Square in the rain.

We then headed over to the Rubin Museum of Art on 17th Street which was filled with wonderful treasures to sketch as well as being a gorgeous building inside. We were joined by some new local members as well as Rory from Tasmania and Tom from the UK. It is always fun to meet sketchers from other parts of the world and see NYC through their eyes!

I started with a sketch of a male lion from Nepal from the 19th century, one of a pair on the ground floor of the museum. I think most of us were attracted to sketch one of them.

There were some beautiful statues like this one of Bodhisattva from Tibet created in the 12th century with gilt copper alloy.

Janet was sketching on the ground floor...and in a lotus position too.

Lance was sketching one of the statues.

We took a break for lunch at the cafe, sampling some different foods from the east. Some of our members (as always) sketched right through lunch. I was too busy talking to our visitors.

My next sketch was of Virupaksha, the Guardian King of the West. The statue was from China from the 17-18 century from the Qing Dynasty.

Then I sketched the statue of Buddha that was in the lobby. 

Around 3:30 those of us who remained gathered to share our sketches. I tried to get a photo of everyone but some came out better than others.

Mark

Toi

Janet

Rory (from Tasmania)

Svetlana

Susan's sketches

Tom (from the UK)

Mary

And a group shot with some of our sketchers.

Many thanks to the staff of the Rubin Museum of Art for being so welcoming and allowing us to sketch all over the museum and use whatever materials we wanted. Everyone was very welcoming and gave us such positive feedback on our artwork.