30 Day Challenge - Day 25 - Korean Statue & More

Yesterday the NYC Urban Sketchers met at the Brooklyn Museum to sketch. There were some interesting exhibits. I knew I needed to do my gouache painting for Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" challenge. I wandered up to the Korean Art exhibit and found this statue. It was one of two on display and it is a boy attendant from the Joseon dynasty in Korea during the 18th Century.

After lunch I headed down to the lobby. The combination of this statue, the brick wall and the archway had interested me when I came into the museum, but I saved it for the second half of the day realizing that the statue itself was going to be a challenge. The statue is "The Fallen Angels" by Salvatore Albano. Marble statues are always intimidating as I have to think about what colors to use on the white that will show the shading and the shape. Then this particular statue had such strange contortions of the bodies of the fallen angels. It was very difficult to figure out what body part belonged to each angel. I ended up sketching the statue with a ultramarine blue watercolor pencil and then going over that with a light wash water-soluble graphite pencil. Watercolors were added later.

As usual the group gathered at the end of the day for libations and to share our artwork at a local restaurant/bar called Tooker's Alley. The bar is artist friendly and they even have blank pages in the back of their menu for patrons to draw something to leave for their archives. I didn't sketch in the menu. These are three of the other sketchers who were seated across from me.