World Wide SketchCrawl #46 at the Planting Fields Arboretum

The NYC Urban Sketchers somehow missed scheduling a crawl on Saturday for the WW SketchCrawl #46 on Saturday. So my friend, Susan, and I decided to do a Long Island version. She suggested going to the Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay. Go to an arboretum with the frigid temps we had on Saturday??? Yes!!! Aside from walking from the car to the main greenhouse and out of the building to use the restrooms, we were in a beautiful, tropical wonderland. The only thing missing was someone delivering tropical drinks to us. The sun was shining and we took off our down jackets, hats, gloves, scarves, and heavy sweaters and settled in to sketch. We even thought ahead to bring our lunches (my idea) because heaven forbid we starve. lol

I started with a flowering bromeliad.

Then I moved on to sketch the anthuriums.

I liked the view down the length of the greenhouse.

There were more bromeliads to sketch....

lots of orchids...

and other tropical plants.

Susan took a photo of me sketching. It looks like I'm in a tropical forest.

Photo by Susan Toplitz

At 4:00 they came and told us they were closing the greenhouse for the day, or we would have kept sketching until it got too dark. We were in a magical, special world and oblivious to the weather conditions outside until we had to put on all our winter gear for the walk back to the car.