Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Flowers in a Vase

Back about two weeks ago I bought some flowers at Trader Joe's. I painted them at the time. Well the purple flowers didn't last for too long, but the pink ones are still going strong. I pulled them out and put them into a smaller vase and am still enjoying them.


Monday, March 30, 2020

Forsythia

It is so nice to ride around at this time of year when the forsythia is in bloom. For some reason that pop of yellow really makes me smile. The problem is finding a place that I can sit and paint from my car. There is a lot of forsythia along the service road to the highway, but that isn't usually a good place to pull over and sketch or paint.


Sunday, March 29, 2020

Dr Sketchy's NYC

There are all kinds of fun sketching opportunities while we are 
inside practicing social distancing. Today there was a figure drawing session thanks to Dr Sketchy's NYC with Persepone (Kita St Cyr). The event was done on YouTube. There were poses of varying lengths from 2 minutes to 20 minutes. Here are a few of the shorter poses that I sketched. Most were 2-5 minutes here. These shorter poses were pretaped.


These poses were a little longer and I think a few were live on YouTube. They ranged from 5-15 minutes.


This was a 20 minute pose and was done live.


We came back after intermission and were just starting another pose when YouTube took down the video. Apparently they thought it violated their rules. So this was my last sketch for the event.
My thanks to Kita St Cyr and Dr Sketchy NYC for all the work done to organize this online. It seems that we all knew the video had stopped, but she held the next pose for 20 minutes because she wasn't aware of what happened. Later in the day she did post a link to the part we saw with an additional 20 minutes of pretaped poses which was very nice of her.

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Virtual Travel Sketching with Google Maps

For the last few days Mark Leibowitz, who organizes the NYC Urban Sketchers, has been tantalizing us with the following sketch of his. We were given several links to get ourselves familiar with using Google Maps, because that was how we were going to do our weekly sketch event this weekend.

Digital sketch by Mark Leibowitz using Procreate.

It turns out that our destination was Amsterdam, where so many of us had attended the last Urban Sketchers Symposium. For the morning we were given a link to a particular area, but we had the freedom to wander around and pick a view nearby. Imagine my surprise to click on the link and find that I was right outside the apartment that I had rented when I was there. lol So of course I didn't really move around much because I wanted to do that view which included the apartment door, the canal, a houseboat, some typical Dutch architecture and the obligatory bicycles. My apartment is the one on the far right with the planter filled with flowers.


We took a lunch break and then Mark gave us a second link, this time to the area near the Rembrandt Museum. I took a bit of a walk on Google Maps and found this interesting shop.


Sketching today brought back some really good memories of my time in Amsterdam. The only thing I didn't miss was the days of 100 degree temperatures!

Friday, March 27, 2020

Daffodils

Today was a beautiful day with sunshine and a temperature that went up to about 65 degrees. I needed to get outside since they are forecasting rain/showers for tomorrow. I headed over to the Bayard Cutting Arboretum in Oakdale. When I was there the other day I saw that they had beds of daffodils that were starting to come up. They looked so pretty so I sat my chair down along the edge of the bed and painted a few.



Thursday, March 26, 2020

Sketchbook Revival Lessons

There are all kinds of art projects, lessons, and workshops taking place online while we are all doing our social distancing at home. I've signed up for Sketchbook Revival with Karen Abend. She has sponsored free lessons before and have enjoyed some of them. For each revival she invites a group of artist to each do a lesson. I watched the first session which was in several parts but never got any of the activities done for that one. I may go back to it yet.

I am being choosy about which lessons I do. Carla Sondheim did a fun lesson the other day doing sketches from blobs of paint. You do some random blobs of paint with a knife and a scraper and then look at the shape turning it into something...sometimes you have to turn the blob in a different direction to "see" something. It was fun to do. Here are my blobs.






Yesterday Tamara Laporte did a lesson on creating "quirky birds." I had a lot of fun with this and will probably try another one. I think they would make fun prints for cards. This combined watercolors, posca pens, white gel pen, and acrylic paints. 




Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Virtual Tour of the NYBG Orchid Show

In this crazy time there are all kinds of art activities to participate in. I never get to meet up with the weekday NYC Urban Sketchers Group that is organized by Cathy Gutterman in Westchester. Today she had the group go on a virtual walk through The Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. It was a fun and informative tour. I thought it was going to be live, but it was prerecorded which turned out to be a good thing because I was able to go back and watch parts again and add additional details.

The tour started in the Conservancy Greenhouse which is where all special programs are located. I am a NYBG member, but due to the virus the gardens are closed. The display was designed by Jeff Leatham and the tour was led by Marc Hachadourian, Director of Glasshouse Horticulture  and Senior Curator of Orchids. I sketched several views of the Greenhouse as we walked along.

As you enter the Greenhouse there is a water feature and above it is this lovely grid of Vanda orchids in fuscia and purple.


Next we went to the American Desert Gallery which is presently being renovated and is closed to the public. I've sketched there many times.


A colorful tunnel connects the sections of the Conservancy.


Each of the above sketches were small and are all on the same sketchbook page.


As the tour continued, I sketched a few of the many different orchids. I also sketched Marc showing a  small orchid plant.


My thanks to Cathy for organizing this. It was fun! If you would like to see the tour you can follow this link.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Bouquet

I had gone grocery shopping to Trader Joe's the other day. It is a small sized grocery store that happens to sell cut flowers that last an exceptionally long time. I picked up two bunches with the idea of painting them, but it took me until this weekend to finally get around to it. This was done with watercolors and watercolor pencils.


Monday, March 23, 2020

Equipment

Yesterday I was out for a bit and looked for something that would fit the current Scavenger Hunt on Wet Canvas. One of the items was a piece of heavy machinery or construction equipment. This was parked in the corner of the parking lot by one of the markets...far from anyone else. Sketched from inside my mobile studio.


My niece-in-law posted this on her FB page as a sort of challenge to do to keep us entertained.
Feel free to join in. I imported it into ArtRage and then added the details. It was definitely a learning experience importing it and working in layers.



Sunday, March 22, 2020

Beginning of Spring

It seems like spring is arriving and things are starting to bloom. I was near the Bayard Cutting Arboretum on Friday and decided to stop and see if anything new was flowering. A few daffs were open but not in an area that was good for sketching. I saw these pink and purple flowers in front of some dry flowers. I liked the contrast. Luckily the arboretum is large enough that social distancing is easy to do. It was nice to get out among the flowers.


Saturday, March 21, 2020

NYC Urban Sketchers Go Virtual

After missing our sketching day last weekend the NYC Urban Sketchers came up with a plan for us to "meet" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and have a virtual sketch event. For the morning we followed the museum's link and found European oil paintings from the 1800s. Our task was to pick two paintings and incorporate elements of each of them into one new painting or sketch. I picked Auguste Renoir's "Madam Georges Carpentier" and took one of the daughters who happened to be sitting on her dog and combined it with Camille Corot's painting "A Woman Reading."


Sadly we couldn't all meet for lunch, but in the afternoon we selected something from the Met's Lehman Collection to sketch. I selected this sculpture of Saint James the Less which was once part of an altar with 5 sculptures of saints who were deciples of Jesus. This was created in either Northeast France or Southern Netherlands somewhere around 1450-60.



All of the sketches were posted on the NYC Urban Sketchers Facebook page. We had sketchers from all over the world join with us today. It was a fun way of sketching together.

Friday, March 20, 2020

Bay Park View

I had a doctor's appointment this week with my endocrinologist that I considered canceling due to the virus. But it is not like going to a primary care doctor where people come in sick with colds and the flue and who knows what else. So I kept the appointment. The doctor's office is a good hour and 20 minute ride from home. Her office is near where I used to work and live before retiring. On the way home I took a sketch break, and I stopped at Bay Park which is in East Rockaway very close to where I lived before we moved out here. It was a grey day and it drizzled on and off, so the sky and the water were grey too. Off on the right are a few tall buildings that are on the outskirts of Manhattan which is just across the bay.


Thursday, March 19, 2020

Sketch Club at Home - My Dishes

 Since we can no longer meet as a group because of the virus restrictions, the Patchogue Sketch Club picked a theme and the members were able to do our sketch at some time during the day. The theme for yesterday's sketching while practicing social distancing at home was "My Dishes," done for the Patchogue Sketch Club's Quarantiine Edition. This was done with a Sketch & Wash pencil and watercolors.


Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Robert Moses Dunes

On Monday I headed over to Robert Moses State Park. It was easy to do socially isolated sketching there even though there were a lot of people walking around. I just opened the windows and sat in my car. Most of the people were walking along the boardwalk to the lighthouse, but I decided that would mean encountering too many people on a narrow surface.


Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Captree State Park - Part II

Captree State Park has a few parking lots, one for the party boats and restaurant, another for the boat ramp, another for the fishing pier, and another facing the opposite direction looking toward the bridge that goes to Robert Moses State Park and the ocean. 

I headed to sketch the view looking toward the bridge. I like this view a lot and often got there to sketch or paint.


Next I captured someone who was walking through the path by the dune fences.


Just in case you wanted to see the full double page spread looks like, here it is.


Monday, March 16, 2020

Captree State Park - Part 1

Yesterday was a mild day so I decided to head somewhere near the water and do some "solitary isolation" sketching from my mobile studio. I stuck a Stillman & Birn mixed toned paper sketchbook in my bag. I had used this sketchbook during the Urban Sketching Symposium in Amsterdam for the workshop I took with Pat Southern Pearce. The sketchbook I have has beige, black and gray paper.

I drove over to Captree State Park for inspiration and decided to do a double page spread in the sketchbook. Captree is known for the party fishing boats that leave from there. During the warmer months, there aren't too many of them at the dock because they are all out for the day with the fishermen. Yesterday there were lots of them, but the Island Princess caught my eye. I used watercolors, ink, white gouache, a white Signo gel pen, and a white Posca pen for this on grey paper.


Next I headed to the parking area where the boat launch area is. There was someone pulling their boat out of the water onto their trailer, but it didn't look like he would be there long enough for me to sketch him and his boat...and I was right. He was gone too quickly. So instead I did the water and the marshes in the bay. (This is the same bay where I did the sketches of the oystermen and the oyster dock this fall.)


 I will post more from there tomorrow.

Sunday, March 15, 2020

Mickey's Amaryllis

When my sister, Mickey and I came back from sketching the tower and walking in the park I decided I had to sketch one of her amaryllis plants that were on the kitchen table. Two of them were in bloom and were such pretty colors. I have never been able to get mine to grow so I was glad I was there to sketch this one.


Saturday, March 14, 2020

Waldwick Erie Interlocking Tower

I spent the day in New Jersey with my sister, Mickey, today. I think the last time we got together was at my nephew's wedding back in October...so we celebrated Christmas today and then went out sketching.
I had checked the internet for a historical building there that I've always wanted to see and sketch, but instead I found a spot right in her town that looked interesting. So we went to the Waldwick Erie Interlocking Tower instead which was built in 1886. The tower is like a traffic control tower which monitored the train movements on the tracks below and gave the operators a commanding view of the train yard. At its height, the yard operated 24 hours a day and handled 100 trains a day. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places. We decided it was too windy and cool to sit outside so we sketched from my mobile studio.


Friday, March 13, 2020

Scavenger Hunt Sketches

Today I went out with my list of items from the Wet Canvas Scavenger Hunt. There were a few outdoor items I knew I could probably find. This hunt is being hosted by my friend Jo Castillo. The items I searched for were a steeple, a machine (which I found at a pizza place), and a fire hydrant.





Thursday, March 12, 2020

Smith Point Park

I was busy for most of the early part of the day doing some cleaning that has been waiting to be done since Jerry got sick. But his afternoon I took a ride down to the ocean. I usually visit the ocean beach all year long, but haven't been down there yet this year. It was windy so I sat in my mobile studio and did a small painting of the ocean and the dunes at Smith Point Park.


Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Arboretum Blooms

Since I was not at the rehab facility all day I had some time to sketch outdoors. I dropped off laundry for Jerry and was near the Bayard Cutting Arboretum. I had about an hour before it closed so I looked for something in bloom. This pink tree (I don't know the species.) had lovely little flowers and right around it there were hellebores in bloom too. It was a mild day so I sat there comfortably sketching until closing time. I did the sketches all on the same page which makes the hellebores look bigger than the blooms on the tree. I cropped it into two sections so it looks a bit better.




The corona virus is affecting other things here too. My sketch group that meets on Wednesday evening decided to cancel tonight and the NYC Urban Sketchers (as well as most of the Urban Sketching groups) are canceling their weekend sketch events. Luckily I don't mind sketching solo and often sketch from my mobile studio. I hope that you aren't affected too much. The virus seems to be spreading rather quickly so I guess curtailing exposure in groups is a sensible thing. Be careful out there!

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Burano Colors

With all that has been going on with the coronavirus lately I've been seeing so many photos of places I've visited that are being hit so hard by quarantines and restrictions. I didn't get to sketch anything at the rehab facility or outdoors today, so I did the next best thing and worked from a photo that I took in Burano, Italy. The buildings are amazingly colorful and Burano is one of my favorite places.


An another thing being affected by the virus is Jerry's rehab facility. As of tomorrow the NYS Department of Health is not allowing visitors to rehab facilities and nursing homes. I don't know how long the restriction will last, but I am not happy about it. They are not taking into account that many of the patients rely on family members/advocates to monitor and assist with their care. I hope the restrictions do not last.

Monday, March 9, 2020

Roommate

I've been wanting to sketch Jerry's roommate, Roger, since he came in and occupied the bed next to Jerry, but he wasn't usually in a good position to sketch him where he wouldn't notice what I was doing. Today he seemed engrossed in what he was watching on TV or else was sleeping with his eyes closed. Since this week is the OneWeek100 People challenge I figured I had better at least get a sketch of one person done. lol The other 99 probably will have to wait for another time.


Sunday, March 8, 2020

Visitors & Exhibit

Down the hall from Jerry's room is a small library. I think it is used more for little gatherings with family than as a place to read. There are about 5 tables. This group was gathered for quite a while, so I was able to sketch all of them except one young man who was sitting in the empty chair. He went off to get lunch for the group. 
#momentsketchers


Today was the reception for the South Bay Art Association's "Women in the Arts" exhibit in Patchogue at The Cheese Patch. We timed it perfectly by having the reception on International Women's Day. Here are a few photos from the reception.

Some of the talented ladies who were part of the exhibit.

Gisella Scogland, Me & Laurie Fosmire

Senator Monica R. Martinez (center) with our SBAA President Krystle DiNicola. The Senator gave out certificates of appreciation to all the women who participated in the exhibit.