Truck and Flowers

 I always love the combination of a truck and flowers. This was painted with my plein air group at the Peconic River Herb Farm in Calverton. I've been there so many times and never noticed this before.

Ciao! I am presently in Venice. Hopefully I will be able to continue my blog from there, and you'll be seeing some of my favorite places. I just wanted to catch up on some the work I finished lately.

Pumpkins!

My plein air group painted at Andrews Family Farm in Wading River the other day. The rainbow of pumpkins captured my attention. My thanks to Denise Andrews and the staff for always being so welcoming.

Around Locally

 I've been sketching a bit around locally. This is the back deck of a restaurant in Patchogue that is right on the canal called Harbor Crab.

I did stop into Sayville Bean for a capuccino and a sketch the other day.

This house was up in Smithtown among the historic houses.

You know how I love the street corners in the small towns. This was sketched of the East Moriches Hardware Store.

Market view

This is a sketch of a market in Moriches. They have a bit of everything including wine. They are always decorated nicely for Halloween.

 

Arts on Terry

 Arts on Terry was recently held in Patchogue. Two of my art groups were represented. The Patchogue Sketch Club once again did a group project...this time we did printing. I posted a few photos of the group in action carving the plates and printing on paper and on fabric. Here is what our wall looked like...although it was hard to get the whole wall without a lot of glare on the pieces. The lobster prints were mine.

My favorite part of Arts on Terry is seeing the live paintings that are created. My friend, Nora Francese was painting nearby, so I sat and sketched her at work.

A friend's friend snapped a photo of me sketching Nora.

Here is Nora almost finished. She started at noon and was painting until 5 PM. There were somewhere between 8-10 artists selected to do the large paintings. They are always impressive!

In addition to the wall with our prints on it, our group had a table with assorted merchandise as well as paintings and sketches on display. Here are a few of the members of the group.

Elephants Again!

The weekend after my Posca workshop the NYC Urban Sketchers scheduled sketching the Elephant Migration that I had sketched the week before. I really didn't want to sketch them again,  but my friend, Susan wanted to go. She convinced me to go into the city with her...but my plan was to sketch the surrounding area, not the elephants. We got there really early because I knew how crowded it was the week before. Well, once I saw them all in a line with out a huge crowd, I had to do one sketch...right? It ended up being a parade of elephants across a double page spread in one of my smaller sketchbooks. Sketching all the elephants and the area around them took a lot of time.

OK, I was done with the elephants! Looking around I was attracted to the yellow signs around Serafina, a popular restaruant which was constantly busy.

Around 3:00 we gathered together for our "show and tell." There were about 40 sketchers, so it took quite a while to go through everyone. One of our sketchers sold one of her elephant sketches to a tourist. 

Some of the sketch groups do a "throw down" where each person selects one sketch to put down on the ground to be viewed. We walk around our circle of sketchers and show our work. I like our way of doing it better. People can show multiple sketches if they want, you know who the sketch belongs to, and the sketcher can tell a bit about what they did and the materials they used. Here I am showing my elephants.

Below is a photo of the group of elephants that were my models for the day.

North Sea Road Market and More

I recently went to Sag Harbor to meet friends for lunch. It was a beautiful day, so I wanted to stop and sketch something before heading home. The Deli Fresh Market & Seafood caught my eye. How could I pass this up?

My car needed its annual inspection in September so I made a visit to my local Nissan dealership. I brought along my iPad and did a sketch of the plant that was in the waiting room.

I'm sure many of you have been following the stories of the damages from the recent hurricane that passed through quite a few of our states on the east/central part of our country. Sadly it affected a friend who was part of the NYC Urban Sketchers for years. Denise moved to Asheville NC when she retired from teaching to live out her dream of opening an art studio for printing. I've seen photos of the studio and have enjoyed seeing the classes and exhibits she has held. The flooding from the hurriccompletely destroyed everything in her studio. It was under 15 feet of water for 72 hours. Her life's work, artwork of other artists, printing presses, and studio furnishings are ruined, covered in mud, or just gone. She put her heart and soul into her studio in the River Arts District. I know insurance will cover some of her losses, but I know it will take a lot of energy and willpower to pull herself up and start again. Luckily Denise still has a safe place to live. The entire arts district in Asheville is facing the same future. 

My heart aches for all of them!