Lighthouse Across the Bay

 I couldn't be near a beach with a lighthouse view and not sketch it. I was at Captree State Park where I painted the previous scene. It is across the Great South Bay and you can see the Fire Island Lighthouse located on the western end of Fire Island in Robert Moses State Park. I like the view across the water.

Beach Grasses

 I don't get tired of sketching beach grasses. This was done over the weekend at Captree State Park in Islip.

Captree State Park View

 I am still doing sketches in the Arteza sketchbook for the SBAA Sketchbook Project. This is the Robert Moses Bridge as seen from Captree State Park. This bridge links the Robert Moses Causeway to Robert Moses State Park.

Direct Watercolor #17

 While I was at Captree painting the bridge I did a second painting for the day, this time of the Fire Island Lighthouse across the Great South Bay. This is my 30 x 30 Direct Watercolor #17 for the challenge. Sometimes it helps to stay one painting ahead just in case you don't get to paint something one day. That happens, even to me.

Dune Fences

With the 100 people challenge this week I've fallen behind in my regular posting. This was done a while ago at Captree State Park.

30 x 30 Direct Watercolor - Day 15

 We are at the halfway point in the 30 x 30 Direct Watercolor Challenge. This was done at Captree State Park and is 5 x 7.

360 Degree View

 Over in the Scavenger Hunt on Creativespark.art one of the items was the view in front of you. As a challenge we were asked to sketch what was in front of us, then turn 90 degrees and sketch that view, turn 90 degrees again, and finally sketch the last final 90 degree view. My friend, Jo Castillo did the challenge so if she could do it I could too. lol I went to Captree State Park which is on the bay side. The clouds on Saturday were a feast to sketch. It was windy so I sat inside my mobile studio to do all of these.

I did the sky in front of me to start.

Still seated in the car I turned to my left and sketched this car and the buildings that house the restaurant and the restrooms.

Next I did the view 90 degrees to my left...a truck and some foliage.

This view was behind me so I backed out of my parking space, turned the car around, and reparked but in reverse in the same spot.

Dune Fences

 After painting the dune view that I posted yesterday I crossed back over to the mainland and stopped at Capture State Park. It looks back across the bay to the park I had already painted on Fire Island. For some reason this image shows a bit darker than the actual painting.

Bikers at Captree

 Saturday was one of those beautiful days that you just have to get outside for a while. I took a ride over to Captree State Park thinking I would sit out by the dunes and sketch the lighthouse across the bay. Imagine my surprise to see motorcycles and bikers in the parking area near the fishing charter boats. There were probably about 8-10 of them just hanging around talking. I've seen some groups of bikers that make me a bit nervous, like the Pagans, but a few of these bikers were wearing Harley Davidson logos on their clothes so I was thinking these were more recreational bikers. I loved the guy on the right wearing chaps. His girlfriend was also there wearing chaps too. I didn't get too close because I didn't want them to realize I was sketching them from my "mobile studio."

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.

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.

Inktober Day 3 - Dunes and Beach

For Day 4 of Inktober I headed over to Captree State Park. This is the same area where we took the boat over to the oyster farm, but I stayed in the park area. The dunes are always interesting and there is a view of the bridge on the Robert Moses Causeway that goes over to Robert Moses State Park and the Fire Island Lighthouse. I did this sketch with the Elegant Writer Pen.

#inktober

#inktober2019

From the Oyster Dock - Part 2

Ron and I were painting on the same side of the oyster dock so when I finished my first painting I sketched him at work.

We took a break for lunch. Each of us had brought along our lunch but Ruth, our host, also had crackers and cheese and a nice bottle of rose. It was great to have lunch with such a special view.

After lunch I stayed at one of the picnic tables and did the view from there. It was nice because the top level of the dock was elevated so you could see the water in the distance. The sky kept changing with some nice darker clouds.

Unfortunately the clouds got darker and before long it was drizzling. We packed up everything and Chuck took us back to the Captree dock. Ruth and Chuck have invited us back next weekend. Yay!!

From the Oyster Dock - Part 1

I love when things work out and you get to experience something different. One of our NYC Urban Sketching friends who also lives on Long Island invited a few of us on an adventure. Her husband is an oyster farmer and has oyster beds in the Great South Bay near the Robert Moses Causeway. He said that we could come and sketch either from the oyster dock where he and his men work or on one of the other small islands that have small cottages on them. This past Thursday was our day.

It turned out that the weather wasn't good and a few people cancelled, but a few of us were still willing to go out knowing it might rain. As Chuck said, the oyster dock is only about a 5 minute ride out into the bay and he could bring us back to the Captree boat dock at any time if the weather turned nasty. He drove 4 of us around the area so we could see what our painting/sketching options were. He also explained a bit about how oysters are farmed, which I knew nothing about. We all ended up staying on the oyster dock to work. It turned out to be a mostly overcast day at times, but the sun did come out once in a while. This was my view across to a small island that had a few cottages that were in use and a few that were abandoned and fairly derelict. In the background is the western end of Fire Island where I paint the lighthouse all the time.

Here are a few photos from our ride around the islands. You get a much different view when you are out on the water.

Captree Sketches

I was down by Captree State Park on Friday and did two small panoramas of the view. These are about 2 x 5.

New Year's Day Visits

Happy New Year!!!

On New Year's Day I decided to drive over to the beach. This is sort of an unofficial tradition for me if I am home and don't have any other plans. 

In the morning I had watched a few youtube videos about painting with gouache. That is something I'm hoping to practice this year...no, I will still do most of my work in watercolors, so don't worry. This past year I bought a starter set of Holbein gouache tubes containing a primary red, blue and yellow as well as a white and black. 

My first stop was at Captree State Park. The parking lot was covered with the remains of the snow from the other day. There were also some pockets of snow along the dune fences and on the dunes themselves. I should have experimented a bit with the gouache paints beforehand to see what combinations would produce what shades, but I dove right in.

Next I headed over the bridge to Robert Moses State Park which is on Fire Island. It was amazing to see the frozen areas around the pilings of the bridge. They made such beautiful patterns and textures, but there was no way to stop and take photos. 

It seems that a lot of people have the same tradition of visiting the beach on the first day of the year. When I was there last Jan 1st there were a lot of people tailgating and celebrating in the parking lot and walking to the lighthouse. I usually walk along the boardwalk to the lighthouse, but it was too cold on Monday.  This year there were some people hanging around and some diehearts that were heading down to the beach with beach chairs and coolers. (They did actually sit there on the sand.) The thermometer in my car said it was 19 degrees and the wind was really strong. I got out of the car long enough to walk over to the boardwalk and take a few photos.  This is what it looked like...beautiful but frosty!

I did sit in the car and do a watercolor sketch of the dunes and snow, but I was cold and soon headed home with my heater blowing nice hot air. 

Back to the Beach

This week we had several beautiful days so I headed over to the beach. This was done at the beach at Captree State Park.

Captree View

Last Thursday I was headed to the beach on Fire Island. For some reason the traffic was at a standstill  and I wasn't yet over the last bridge. I ended up getting off the road and turning around. I ended up at Captree State Park which is on the bay side instead. There is a beach area which is a bit of a hike through the shrubbery. This is one of my paintings that I did for #WorldWatercolorMonth.

Captree View

This is one of the sketches that I did for Mark Taro Holmes' workshop using 5-7 single line sketches. This is the view from Captree State Park looking toward Robert Moses State Park.

Goin' Fishin'

The other day on the way to the beach, I made a stop at Captree State Park which is across from Robert Moses State Park. There is a large area along the water where all the fishing charter boats leave from. I lucked out and there were some people already waiting for the 11:00 fluke trip. There were a lot more people but by the time I sketched these three everyone else had already boarded. I hope they caught some fish.