Sketching Party

On Saturday the NYC Urban Sketchers met for our holiday party. It was held in the penthouse party room in the building of one of our members. The room was on the 8th floor with floor to ceiling windows and an unobstructed view of downtown Manhattan from Jersey City, NJ. Yeah!!! We had about 60 people show up...most of them sketchers or spouses, but a few guests too. Our chapter has a group that meets on weekends as well as a group that meets during the week, so it was nice to meet some of the people who don't join us on weekends. We also did an art swap where everyone brought a wrapped sketch. Of course everyone brought their sketch materials and either sketched the view or the other sketchers at the party. It is hard to keep sketchers from sketching. lol

This was the view we had. The party began at 3 so we did have enough time to do a daylight sketch.

I've always wanted to do a nocturne of the city...so when it got dark this was my chance. I used gouache for this small, fairly quick sketch.

One of my friends brought along his mom who he takes care of. She is in a wheelchair and a bit unaware of what is going on, but she was a good sport about posing for us. I think she enjoyed the attention. I did a quick sketch of Mary Jane before she and Andrew went home. It came out looking so much like her! I was really pleased with it.

I stopped sketching for a while so that I could socialize too. It is hard to sketch and talk to anyone except the people sketching next to you. lol We had good food, conversation, music and a bit of dancing. Here is a group photo that was taken at the end of the night. I think some of the sketchers were missing by then. Many of these people have become a good part of my sketching family.

You'll notice someone in the middle with a big sheet of sketching paper. Those pages were passed out to all of us. Everyone was asked to do one or two sketches either using a single page or the double page that is going to be made into an accordion book. I did a sketch later of some of the sketchers sitting at the tables, but forgot to take a photo of it before handing it in so you can't get to see that one. #nycurbansketchers #momentsketchers

I know this was a lot of work for the party committee, but they did an outstanding job! Everyone seemed to have a good time, even if some of them nearly froze getting there. The temperature yesterday was in the teens and very windy with lots of snow on the ground from our storm the other day. A group of us from Long Island carpooled so it wasn't too bad traveling.