30 x 30 Direct Watercolor - Day 5 ++

Yesterday my friend and I went into the city to join the NYC Urban Sketchers at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, a new branch of the NYC Public Library system. It is located on 5th Ave and there is an outdoor terrace around two sides of the building. Knowing I needed to get my painting done for the 30 x 30 Direct Watercolor Challenge I chatted with the other sketchers a bit and then sat down to paint the view. 

Directly opposite my spot was this older building with beau arts ornamentation. Someone googled it and found out it is called the Knox Building. (When I got home I checked for more info and found out it was actually the Knox Hat Building, built in 1901 and their retail shops were on the first two floors and the company headquarters occupied the other floors. Today a modern building wraps around the historic building and the entire thing is an apartment building.) Here is my direct watercolor which is 5 x 7.

We probably had about 25-30 sketchers spread around the terrace, including one urban sketcher visiting from Penang, Malaysia. There is an active Urban Sketchers group there. On the terrace there were chairs and tables as well as a wall for us to sit on. I incorporated several of our members into my sketch done looking down 5th Avenue. On the right is the historic Lord & Taylor building which was one of the great places to shop for clothing in NYC. The building was purchased by Amazon in 2021.

I decided to sketch the Knox Building again with water-soluble brown ink. The ink kind of took over the architectural ornamentation in the sketch. I wanted to add a touch of the green patina but that just stirred up the ink even more. I ended up using permanent ink to redefine some of the lines. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the way the sketch turned out.

Everyone seemed to really enjoy the location so I think we will return there at some point in the future.