Happy Year of the Rooster

Last Saturday the NYC Urban Sketchers celebrated the Lunar New Year by sketching in Chinatown. A Firecracker Festival and Cultural Festival was taking place and it was super crowded. It was also very cold, so I dressed in layers, had toe warmers in my boots and hand warmers that I didn't use. (There was no way to get them to stay in my fingerless gloves.) I brought along my stool to sit on but with the crowds except for the very first sketch, it stayed in my backpack.

I started with a sketch of some of the buildings along Forsyth and Grand Streets by the park. I found a spot to sit and was comfortable sketching. Some of the Chinese sketchers later asked me how I knew Chinese writing. I told them I had no idea what the letters spelled. lol I just copied the shapes.

We could hear that the festival was starting in the park, so we came up with a location to meet in a few hours and split up. There was no way we could possibly stay together. Here are a few photos I took. 

A baby in traditional Chinese clothing.

Stuffed roosters for sale.

The Chinese dragon danced up and down the street by some of the restaurants.

I wanted to do a sketch of the table where they were selling poppers, big long tubes that would explode into paper confetti. This is what the spot looked like. What I was sketching was beyond most of these people.

 I would have a glimpse of the table for a few seconds and then a hundred people would walk through in my view. lol That and being knocked into repeatedly didn't make sketching easy. But I got my sketch done.

The last sketch I did before we went to lunch was of a store on the corner selling all kinds of trinkets for the celebration. I tucked myself between a big street garbage can and a phone booth to sketch. At least people weren't knocking into me for this sketch.

When we finally stopped for lunch all the restaurants were so crowded we couldn't find a Chinese restaurant that could accommodate 15 people.