Hidden

 I'm not sure what this tower and small structure were used for in the past. I was in Bayport and saw just the top of the tank from a distance. The train tracks were between me and the structure, but I wanted to find a view of it. I drove across the tracks and could see bits of it, but not the whole thing. I ended up going in and out of a few driveways for businesses and knew I was getting closer. Finally I ended up going into the parking lot of the Bayport Flower Houses and going around the back of the building. I don't think I was supposed to be back there, but I kept going because I knew it was back there somewhere. It was and it was surrounded by all kinds of discarded materials from the flower house. Nobody else was crazy enough to be back there, and nobody could really see me so I sat in my mobile studio to sketch. Success!! 

I went on Google to see if I could find out what it was, but no luck.

By the Tracks

For some reason along the train tracks I often seen either abandoned buildings or buildings that are neglected with assorted junk around them and graffiti on the buildings. I've seen the same thing often in other countries too. It isn't something that is pretty but I tend to like sketching things like that once in a while. This particular street in Sayville has a few buildings like that.

 

South Bay Boat Repair

 There are locations that I return to and sketch again, like the entrance to South Bay Boat Repair in Patchogue. I like the pillared entrance and the assorted objects and foliage in the foreground.

Sunken Meadow

 A bit northwest of me is a state park that is located right on Long Island Sound. Sunken Meadow State Park has a boardwalk, a beach where you can swim, tidal mud flats, rolling meadows, woods, and marshes. It also has a golf course. I headed over there over the weekend for the views of nature as well as views to sketch people as a warm-up for the upcoming 1 Week 100 People Challenge. 

I sketched the people as they were coming down the slight ramp from the boardwalk to the parking lot.

Once again I am having problems with Blogger. I can post new entries but can't respond to any of the posts that readers submit. I also can't leave responses when I visit the blogs in my "favorites." This has been an ongoing but off-and-on problem for me for a while. My friend, Tina Koyama, had suggested a while back that I use Chrome for Blogger. I downloaded Chrome and so far it seems to be working and letting me respond. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it stays that way.

West Sayville Dock

 The West Sayville Dock is always an interesting place to sketch. There are a lot of nautical buildings and all kinds of boat in various conditions and states of repair. I can always find a subject there.

Snowy View

 No, we didn't have snow again but I've heard that word in the forecast for the end of the week. Somehow I missed posting this after our last snow. I love that there are spots to sit in my mobile studio and see the snow in the wooded areas. This was done in Sayville.

Beach Dunes

Give me a sunny day and a few hours and I will usually try to head over to the ocean or the bay. The bay is mere minutes from me, but I really do prefer the ocean with its dunes and waves. One of the scavenger hunt items on crebativespark.art was "dune" so how could I resist doing this over at Smith Point Beach?

 

Thomas Marine

 This is a view of one of the many boatyards in Patchogue. 

Thomas Marine is down at the end of Argyle Lane.

Some day I am going to do some research on sailboat rigging. I tend to screw it up easily which isn't good when there are as many boats as here.

Seashells and Seagull

Both of these sketches are related to the beach. I have a collection of shells that I've gathered from many beaches that I've been to. The seagull was one of many sitting in the parking lot at the beach the other day. Hope they both make you smile.

 

Shakespeare Theme

 Shakespeare was the theme for the Patchogue Sketch Club on Wednesday. Once again we worked on Zoom. Mark provided two different photos of something in Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth.

Hopefully we will be back to sketching at the library on Wednesday nights in March. It will be nice to be out with people again and be able to converse. Zoom is a bit too limiting.

Lefty Lucy in White

 Having Lefty Lucy's  sessions only twice a month makes me appreciate them even more. She was dressed so nicely in white this week.

Flowers in a Vase

Somehow I missed posting this here for Valentine's Day. Jerry bought me a bouquet of nice flowers. This was done with Derwent Aquatone Watercolor Sticks, watercolors, and Zebra Sensations fountain pens with colored ink. 

They have kept nicely. Maybe I should paint them again.

Kilchurn Castle

On Saturday the virtual group of the NYC Urban Sketchers sketched "Castles and Countryside of Great Britain." We were offered a website filled with references to use for our sketches. This is #NUS (not an urban sketch since it was done from a reference, not from life).

This is Kilchurn Castle in Scotland. I did this in my Strathmore Toned Tan sketchbook using ink, watercolor, and white gouache.

Bayman's Cottage - 2 Versions

About a month ago I was featured on a Facebook page called Sayville Artists. The person running the page posted about 25 of my sketches (most of Sayville). As a result I was contacted by several people who were interested in my work. One woman was interested in a painting I had done of the Bayman's Cottage on the grounds of the Long Island Maritime Museum in Sayville. It seems that the cottage originally belonged to her grandparents and at some point her grandfather donated the cottage to the Maritime Museum. It was moved there from its original location in Sayville. The woman lives in Florida now but has great memories of sitting on the porch and wanted to purchase the painting as a remembrance. It was a painting I had started for Paint the Great South Bay one year, but it started raining and I never completed the painting. I told her that  she could purchase it as it was or if she wanted I would finish the painting for her. She also decided she wanted a smaller version of the painting to give as a gift to her uncle who lives in the house where it is on the museum grounds. The two paintings are very similar.

This is the original one and is 8 x 10.

Here is the smaller 5 x 7 version done for her uncle.

As I worked on the original one I realized there were no shadows anywhere (since it was raining) and no background trees. I made quite a few additions.

Bicycle in the Dunes

Happy Valentine's Day!!! I hope you are having or had a great day.

Ever since I attended the Symposium in Amsterdam I've had this thing for sketching bicycles. Everybody rides a bike there and they are everywhere. This bike was at the beach at Robert Moses State Park in the bike rack by the dunes. There are always bikes there. I don't know if they have been left behind or if they belong to workers at the park. I used artistic license and only did one of the three bikes that were there.

Lighthouse

 We had a few days where the temperatures were above normal. Thursday it was in the mid 50s so I headed over to Robert Moses State Park where the Fire Island Lighthouse is located. Although it was sunny and warm it was a bit too windy to sit out and sketch, so I positioned my mobile studio so I was facing the lighthouse in the distance, rolled down the windows and enjoyed sketching.

Horror Night

 The Patchogue Sketch Club has been meeting online for the last few weeks instead of at the library. When the Covid numbers went up we decided we would rather play it safe. Luckily our "Sketcher in Chief," Mark Propper always seems to find something unusual for us to sketch. This week it was old horror movie posters. I am not a horror movie fan and both of these films were from the 1950s. It was an unusual night of sketching. Several of the members checked out the internet and I know they found a clip from "The Wasp Woman." I haven't seen it.

Port Jeff Houses

 I like sketching in Port Jefferson but finding a good view of something isn't easy. A lot of the streets are steep and parking is limited. Recently I realized that there is a parking lot that faces some houses across Main Street. If I'm lucky I can get a parking spot facing the houses straight on and even though I'm across the street they are visible above the traffic because they are partway up the hill. The other day I was lucky because the spot gave me a view of more than one house. What interested me wasn't the houses right on the street, but the ones that were tucked behind them up the driveways. With them side by side I thought it was a bonus to sketch across the view.

Still Life With Pepper, Lemon, and Mushrooms

I am hosting the Scavenger Hunt on creativespark.art. The challenge was to do a still life using 3 or more items from the hunt. Here's what I did.

 

Snow By The Dunes

 The weather has improved since our snow storm and with a few days of above freezing temperatures and some rain, a lot of the snow is gone. Smaller piles still exist where the snow was plowed and some of it just settled in by the dunes. This was sketched from my mobile studio near Sayville Beach.

Dragon Parade

 On Saturday the NYC Urban Sketchers did a virtual event for the Chinese New Year celebrations. I wanted to participate with them but had to drop off paintings in the morning, so I wasn't available. I used one of the many references to do a small painting of a dragon parade. I have seen a dragon parade a few times in NYC's Chinatown. It is always fun!

Bayport House

 When I finished sketching inside the library I got in my car and realized I had a great view of this house across the street. I figured I would do just a quick sketch and then I started and realized how hard all the roof angles made this. I did it as quickly as I could because I was hungry...it was well past lunchtime.

Indoor Sketching

I had to drop off paintings for a group exhibit at one of my local libraries.  The exhibit is in a brand new building that I hadn't been in before, so I roamed around to see if it was conducive to do sketching from inside the building looking out the big windows. Prior to becoming the library the building was the St. Ursula Center Convent. It would be perfect on freezing cold days if there were good views. The views were OK but nothing to get real excited about. I ended up sitting at a table in one of the reading/work areas. There were some comfy looking blue chairs and some tables, stained glass windows...and lots of books and shelves. Lots of room for social distancing too.

At first I was the only one working in the room but then a man sat at the table in the sketch above and a woman came and sat  at a table across the room. That was too good to pass up. It has been a long time since I've been anywhere where there were captive people to sketch...probably the last time I met with the NYC Urban Sketchers in the city. So I flipped to another page in my sketchbook and sketched both of them.

Snow Shadows

 I had my post-op visit with the doctor on Wednesday and stopped at a nearby park to do a sketch before coming home. There was still a lot of snow on the ground so there were nice shadows from the trees. 

Pre-Op Sketching

On Tuesday I was scheduled for my cataract surgery. In the process of prepping me for surgery they had me seated on a gurney in a pre-op waiting room. They checked my vitals, put in an IV, and then were putting drops in my eyes every 15 minutes. You know I don't like to waste time, so I pulled out a tiny sketchpad and a gel pen to sketch. Mind you that before I came to the Stony Brook Hospital Ambulatory Surgical Center I couldn't even see the largest letter on the eye chart. It was a pale, ghostly image that I couldn't identify. 

Since I sketch regularly I am fairly used to sketching using only my right eye. The nurse would come in to do the drops and kept checking my progress with the sketch. Finally the doctor arrived and she came in to talk to me. She couldn't believe that I was sketching to begin with or that I was doing so well with only one working eye. She called in several people to see what I had done. She said I was currently her #1 artist. Here is the sketch I did. 

On Wednesday I had a post-op visit with Dr. Haque at her office. She wanted to know if I had the sketch with me because she wanted to show it to someone. I didn't have the actual sketch but I had the image on my phone. It was a hit!

Snowy View

This past weekend I did a second painting of the snow while I was waiting for the crew from the development to finish digging and plowing the parking lot. I got a slightly different view out the bedroom window, but in order to sketch from here I have to stand and sketch. There is a large shrub right outside the window that would block the whole view if I sat down. 

With our warmer weather the last few days most of the snow on the bushes and shrubs has melted or fallen off. It doesn't look quite as pretty, so I'm ready for it to be gone. lol

The Bear

It was hard to do a virtual trip to Denali National Park and not sketch some wildlife...so I searched for a reference to work with. This bear looked perfect for sketching quickly. I used watercolors, watercolor pencils, a colored pencil and some gouache in this. Anyway, I'm glad I wasn't up lose and personal with this guy.

 

Train Travel

On Saturday the NYC virtual group had the theme of trains and train travel. I downloaded a few images from the web page we were provided and found this one of the Durango and Silverton Railroad in Colorado. I knew I wanted to do some kind of steam engine and this fit the bill.

Of course I've got a lot of memories of travel by trains having traveled on the NYC subway for years. I also did the train trip from NYC to Florida as a college student for spring break, (and never slept the entire way since I can't sleep sitting up), and used the trains in Europe many times to travel from country to country. I always thought there was something romantic about train travel,..maybe I watched too many movies. lol