Inktober 2022 - Day 31 - Lakeview Cemetery

 HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Today is the final day of Inktober 2022. I went to do my Inktober sketch at the Lakeview Cemetery in Patchogue. It is an old, historic cemetery where I've sketched a few times. I walked over to the area that looked like it had some old headstones. I know a clean-up campaign has been going on there so some of the older headstones seem a lot cleaner than I remember them to be. I started out just sketching in my grey toned Strathmore sketchbook using Noodler's Lexington Grey ink with my Lamy pen. I used some white colored pencil to lighten the headstones in some areas. The scene still needed more to differentiate the items in the scene, so I pulled out my gouache since I know that should cover better than watercolors. That helped and I am pretty happy with the result.

Inktober 2022 - Day 30 - Along the Tracks & Times Square

 Today one of my art groups was having a closing reception for our show that has been in a gallery in Cutchogue. So since I was out on the North Fork I looked for an Inktober subject. This building was along the Mattituck train tracks. It was unusual. None of the doors or windows lined up. Each ended on a slightly different level.

Here is the updated version of my Times Square sketch. I added more color, more details, and did some shading with a grey Tombow ink marker as Ian Fennelly suggested.

Here is the version before the additional work if you want to compare them.

Inktober 2022 - Day 29 - Sketching Workshop

 Today I attended an excellent sketching workshop called "Shapes, Colours and Stories" given by Ian Fennerly from the UK. It was sponsored by the NYC Urban Sketchers. I love Ian Fennerly's work and when I was at the Porto Symposium I attended one of his demos. Thru Etcher I also did an online class with him during the pandemic. 

The class was in Times Square...right in the heart of it. Luckily he found a location for us to work from that was a bit away from the insanity of all the dressed up figures, tour hustlers and entertainers. 

The general idea of the workshop was to focus on the story of the area with the signs and activity around the water using the street lamp posts to block in the sketch. Slowly we added the details. We worked on our ink sketches with assorted thicknesses of pens in several stages (the first was with a light grey Tombow marker which we used instead of a pencil to place the largest items in our sketch. We redrew the items with a 0.2 permanent marker adjusting them as needed.  Then we transitioned to watercolor. The final steps will be to do tone work with grey Tombow ink markers. Ian did a demo of each step on his sketch and then allowed us to do the same while he came around commenting and giving advice as needed. It was only a 3 hr class so a lot was crammed into a small amount of time. He suggested waiting to finishing the last step with the ink markers until he sent us his finished sketch to see what he added and where. A lot of the tonal shading is done directly over the watercolor and the sketching we already did. 

Here is my unfinished sketch which I am using as my Inktober sketch for today. I will work on this more and promise to post it when I am done.

 

Here is a photo of Ian explaining what he added to his sketch.

Inktober 2022 - Day 27 - Unicorn Scarecrow & Autumn Colors

 One of the fun things about Bellport in October is that they decorate Main Street with all sorts of scarecrows for Halloween. Then the public votes on them. Somehow I haven't been in the town yet this year to see and sketch the scarecrows. Usually I sketch a few of them. So today since I was in the town anyway to go to the frame shop, I stopped to sketch the unicorn scarecrow for Inktober. This one is named Hairy Unicorn. I was going to take this photo of it in black and white and then add color (since she was so cute in pink) but it was so windy I couldn't sit there any longer.

When I finished I sat in my car looking out at autumn's colors and painted this.

Inktober 2022 - Day 26 - Boatyard

 For my Inktober sketch today I headed to one of my stand-by locations, Weeks Yacht Yard. There are so many little and big views that I never get tired of sketching there.

Inktober 2022 - Day 25 - Frank Meliville Park

 Today my plein air group met at Frank Melville Park in East Setauket. We were hoping for a lot of autumn colors but the colors weren't at peak yet. I did a view of the bridge with the foliage behind it. I was concerned that it would start raining, so I did a 5 x 7 sized painting.

There are/were a few wonderful old trees in the park. I was planning on sketching the biggest of them which had such wonderful branches and a lot of names carved into it, but was disappointed to see that it was gone. This one which is about half the size isn't quite so impressive. It looks like a section of it is now missing. I guess these trees were affected by the storms we've had the last few years. I hadn't looked for them the last time I was there. For Inktober I used my Elegant Writer pen, my Lamy with Noodler's brown ink, and a Lamy with permanent black ink.

Inktober 2022 - Day 24 - Panera Sketches

 Today was a rainy day so I decided to sketch from an indoor location. We don't have too many coffee houses around unless you count the endless Starbucks. I headed to the Panera Bread in Bohemia. I haven't sketched there in a long time but I know there are good views of the counter area from some of the booths in the front. Since I was there anyway I grabbed a bagel to go with my cup of coffee that I milked for the duration of my sketch time.  I am usually not prepared to sketch my food, but since I had everything I needed (except water to make the ink bleed). I sketched this with my Lamy pen filled with Noodler's brown ink. I ended up putting a bit of coffee on the plate instead of water. It worked!

My original aim was to sketch the actual restaurant which I did while I was munching on my bagel. I think it helps to have food to eat while I sketch. I'm much more patient that way. lol So today I am giving you a double Inktober.

Inktober 2022 - Day 23 Still Life

 Today was one of those rainy, damp days that I really didn't want to go out. So instead I did my Inktober sketch from a still life I set up on my table. I used an orange micron pen, my Lamy pen with Noodler's brown ink, and acrylic inks.

Yesterday after I sketched the Mineola Diner in my sketchbook I also did a quick watercolor and ink sketch of it. This is postcard sized so it is going out with my other postcards to the troops. I'm mailing out a batch of 17 postcards to Mary Jo tomorrow so that she has them in time to send them. 

Inktober 2022 - Day 22 - Mineola Diner & Extra Paintings

 Today my friend, Suzala and I wracked our brains for someplace different to sketch. We ended up going to Mineola were there was an iconic looking diner, complete with a big neon sign. We ended up sitting diagonally across on the opposite coner from it. It is located at a busy intersection and that gave us at least a view that didn't have stopped vehicles right in front of us. Here is my Day 22 sketch. The only part that isn't ink are the wider red areas. I did those in watercolor.

A few weeks ago one of my art organizations had our monthly meeting and then we created small 4 x 6 paintings that could be mounted on 5 x 7 cards to be used as thank you cards or sympathy cards by the organization. We worked in whatever our chosen media was. I worked from photos on my phone. Here are the two that I created.

Inktober 2022 - Day 21 Long Season Farm

 Today I was out on the north fork of Long Island and stopped to do my Inktober sketch at Long Season Farm in Aquebogue. After I took this photo I decided to add color. This will be part of the collection of paintings/sketches of mine going to the troops.

Here is the colorized version.

I did a direct watercolor of a farm field in Jamesport while I was out there. It will also be in the collection going to the troops.

Inktober 2022 - Day 20 - Smithtown House & Life Sketches

 Today I was up in Smithtown and found an interesting house for my Inktober sketch.

Last night the Patchogue Sketch Club was invited to a special event at MOCA LI and hosted by the Patchogue Arts Council which involved poetry and sketching. Our poet, Terri Muuss, read us several of her poems and then posed in a way that she thought reflected her feelings about the part of her life that each poem was written about. As she read her poems we got to know a little bit about her and the horrific difficulties like incest, drugs, and loss that she has survived. Her poems are raw, emotional, and inspiring. 

In the sketch below we did 5 two minute sketches overlapping them.

The very bottom sketch with her arms raided was in response to her poem, "Finish Line."

Inktober 2022 - Days 18 & 19

My Day 18 sketch was done by the Bayport dock. I used my Lamy pen that is filled with Noodler's brown ink which is water-soluble.

 Today's Day 19 Inktober sketch was done in Port Jefferson (Port Jeff to the locals) on East Main Street.

While I was in town I sat in my car up along Spring Street, one of the steep streets that look back to the town and toward the First United Methodist Church. This 4 x 6 postcard and the Inktober sketch will be part of my postcard collection going to the troops. I am debating if I should add color to the Inktober sketch from today and yesterday before I send them out. What do you think?

 

Inktober 2022 - Day 17 - Bayard Cutting Arboretum

Today is my plein air group's morning to paint. We headed over to the Bayard Cutting Arboretum's dahlia garden to paint. I am once again joining my friend Mary Jo Ernst who is collecting 4 x 6 pieces of art to send to the troops for the holidays. I've done this before but I didn't find out early enough to do too many cards. So far I have about 10 of them done and have to send them to her by the middle of next week. So instead of doing a 8 x 10 painting I did several 4 x 6 pieces. This is a view of one of the arbors and the dahlias.

Then I moved over to the area where the birdhouses are and did a 4 x 6 of that area.

At 12:30 a group of us headed over to the Hidden Oak Cafe at the manor house for lunch 

(which is always very good). I needed to get my Inktober sketch done so I headed back to the dahlia garden and used my fude pen to sketch the birdhouse area.

 

Lincoln Center and Inktober Day 16

 Yesterday I forgot to post!!! That's because I went to see my sister, Michelle who lives in New Jersey and her daughter and husband that were visiting from Oklahoma. I hadn't seen them in about 5 years. I left here early and got back late. Sorry about that. 

On Saturday the NYC Urban Sketchers were meeting in the area around Lincoln Center. Our first stop was the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on the corner of Central Park West and W 65th Street. I always find churches and buildings like this difficult to sketch. We got there a little late so I had only about 30 minutes to do this sketch. I decided to let it be my Day 16 Inktober sketch and not worry about color.

Then we moved on to Lincoln Center itself. Aside from the fountain I don't find much there to be too exciting in the plaza. But there are a lot of people that sit at the edge of the fountain and they are always fun to sketch or paint. I did this directly in watercolor. I purposely did the fountain with the trees behind it to make the water stand out more. 

After a nice lunch and time chatting with some of the other sketchers I had time for one more sketch. I sat across the street in Dante Park and sketched the people in front of me and the view back toward Lincoln Center. It gave me a fun composition to work with.

When you are sketching outdoors you never know what will happen. When we got to the plaza I set myself up on my painting chair facing the fountain and Mark set himself up on his stool about 1/4 of the way around the plaza. A short while later a security guard came over to each of us and told us that we could sit on the stairs, or the structures that looked sort of like flat rocks, but we "couldn't use our own furniture." Later I found out that he went around to each of the sketchers that had their own "furniture." We've never had someone stop us from using stools or painting chairs before.

Inktober 2022 - Days 14 & 15

 My car needed to be services and had a recall that needed to be taken care of, so I headed over to the Nissan dealer in Patchogue. I knew I would be there for a while so I brought along my sketchbook and my iPad to keep me busy. It seems like I end up sketching the same view each time since there isn't much that you can see from the waiting area. The style of the car is slightly different and this time I used a ballpoint pen to sketch. It gives a softer look...almost like sketching with a pencil. The ballpoint pen isn't good for filling in solid areas so I was lucky in this Inktober Day 14 sketch.

 

Today I went into Sayville to do a few errands and stopped at Lands End down by the water. I did a sketch of the dock over near the catering & florist area of the event venue for my Inktober 15 sketch.

Sutton Street Parks

 On Saturday the NYC Urban Sketchers met at one of the wealthier areas of NYC by Sutton Place on the east side of Manhattan. Our destination was a series of small Sutton Place Parks starting at E 55 Street and moving north. The 59th Street Bridge (aka Queensboro Bridge) immortalized in Simon & Garfield's well-known song, "The 59th Street Bridge Song" or "Feeling Groovy," was our view.

My first sketch was done in direct watercolor from the view in the park at 55th Street. Like most bridges the structure is a bit overwhelming but I dove right in. The buildings are across the river on the Queens side of the bridge in Astoria.

We then moved on to another small Sutton Place Park on 57 St. The view of the bridge was very similar but the park itself was more interesting with streetlamps, planted areas, and buildings set against the view of the bridge. The string of parks are slowly being connected so that you can walk along a prominade from one little park to the next. Here I captured some of the park elements and another sketcher set in front of the bridge.

There were posters hanging up advertising a free performance of "Twelfth Night" by the Condensed Shakespeare Company in the park starting at 2:00 and as they were setting up a few of us decided we would sketch at the performance. There were two actors who switched back and forth between all of the roles in the play, and an accordionist for the music and a little singing. Since the characters didn't venture far from their mics it wasn't too difficult to capture them, so I did a sketch of each of them and then added the bridge as a backdrop to the performance. When the show was over I went over and shared the sketch with each of the performers, who all asked if they could take a photo of it. They loved that they had been sketched!

I'll post two Inktober sketches tomorrow so I don't fall too far behind.

Inktober 2022 - Day 12 - Wildwood State Park

 I am always looking for someplace new and different to sketch. I've never checked out Wildwood State Park in Wading River before. It is an interesting spot on the north shore. Here on the south shore we have sandy beaches, but the north shore has rocks, boulders and pebbles. I found it interesting enough that I also did a small watercolor of the area too.

Inktober 2022 - Day 11 Weeks Boat Yard & Lighthouse Painting

 A good sketching friend, Mel Barranco, often uses ballpoint pen when he sketches (especially people on his commute each morning), and I love what he does. My friend, Tina Koyama has been doing portrait sketching...often with ballpoint pen. After doing an entire sketch with ballpoint pen my hat is off to both of them. It is not easy! Filling in a solid color takes a lot of time. Using my Lamy is much easier. I don't think ballpoint pen will be my medium of choice.

This was done at one of my favorite sketching spots, Weeks Boat Yard. It may look familiar if you have followed my blog for any amount of time. There are great buildings and lots of boats that seem to move around regularly.

I have been able to get over to Robert Moses Beach on a few different nice, nearly summery days. 

I can sit and see the Fire Island Lighthouse from almost anywhere there.

Inktober 2022 - Day 10 - Paddlewheel

 Today for Inktober 2022 I sketched the Lauren Kristy, a 65 foot turn-of-the-century style riverboat. It sails from the Bay Shore Marina and is available for lunch and dinner cruises on the Great South Bay. I focused on the front of the boat, not the paddle end.

Inktober 2022 - Day 9 - At the Dock

My Day 9 piece was sketched on location near the town commercial docks in Hampton Bays.