The Met - Part 2

I didn't take a break for lunch. Instead I found another sculpture to sketch...bears this time. Again I used the colored pencils. Sorry but I didn't get the info about this sculpture. One of the fun things about the American Wing at the Met is seeing out into the park. It makes a great backdrop with that and the cafe.

Shawne Cooper was hosting our event at the Met. Those who were willing to participate moved over to the Greek & Roman sculptures where Shawne had us form into groups of three for an "Exquisite Corpse" game. We were given papers folded into 3. One person on each team did the head and shoulders from a sculpture in the room. Then we swapped with someone on our team and we each did a torso from one of the figures. Lastly we each did a sketch below the waist...being a bit naughty if we wished. It was fun to see all the different combinations that were made. Here is one from our team.

I had a little time before show-and-tell so I headed into another gallery.

 

The Met - Part 1

 The NYC Urban Sketchers met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Recently. Through the winter we have visited and will continue to visit the Met regularly. For each visit we attempt to sketch in a specific gallery. This particular visit our destination was the The American Wing. It is a great spot with lovely sculptures, a wide open area, a cafe, and views to the outside and Central Park.

Prior to the visit I purchased a set of Prismacolor Premium colored pencils. On their website the museum specifies that only dry materials should be used. Over the years I have used pen and watercolor, but it seems using other materials is often determined by the guards in that particular gallery. Some allow other materials, but I have been told by some guards not to use them. One friend had her paints confiscated. So I decided a nice set of colored pencils would be good to have.

I began the day with a sketch of the sculpture, "Artigon Pouring a Libation Over the Corpse of Her Brother Polyncos" by William Henry Rinehard. In the backgound is my friend, Sonia sketching the statue from the other side. Looking around the gallery there must have been at least 20 of us sketching the statues and Tiffany glass.

Sketches from the Met

 I have wanted to sketch the Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a long time. The area is dimly lit which makes it difficult to see clearly, and the crowd is sometimes a bit much. I tucked myself and my stool into a spot against a wall so people wouldn't bump into me. I worked quickly with my watercolors and ink (even though the watercolors aren't actually allowed...just dry meaterials).

I had a little time before the NYC Urban Sketchers were having their show-and-tell so I returned to the Greek collection where I found this view.

Sketching at the Met

 Recently the NYC Urban Sketchers met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I used tan toned paper and dry watercolor pencils to sketch "Air" by Jean Pierre DeFrance in the European sculpture gallery.

In the afternoon I went the American Wing. I love that you can see the sculptures and look behind them to the outside. Again I used dry watercolor pencils to sketch. Only dry media is supposed to be used in the museum, especially the areas with the sculptures.

Usk Sketchmas Day 18 - Dog or Cat & Museum Trip

 The Sketchmas prompt yesterday was a "dog or cat." I don't have any pets and didn't really want to disturb a friend to go over and do a pet portrait. So I went to Petco and stood by their window to the grooming station. The dog I picked stood pretty still, but the groomer kept moving around and blocking my view. Also, I couldn't see the dog's paws because there were boxes blocking my view. I did the sketch on site but added the color at home.

On Saturday one of my art groups, Wet Paints, had a bus trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a free trip for members...only guests had to pay. How could I pass that up? The museum had several great exhibits so I wasn't planning to spend the day sketching like I usually do. Along with two friend from the group I went to view the Manet/Degas Exhibition which was really good and extensive. Manet & Degas were friends and often painted in the same areas and used the same models. The curator of the exhibit showed a painting of each of theirs and the info by the paintings discussed how the two paintings were related. I learned a lot about both of them.

The second exhibit was titled "Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism." The two artists redefined color as they painted with colors that they sensed rather than the natural hues of what they were seeing. It was a color explosion.

The final exhibit we saw was "Women Dressing Women" which explored many of the women fashion designers from The Met's permanent collection from the turn of the century to the present day. My favorites were some of the older fashions.

The Met's Christmas tree with the beautiful angels merited a stop too.

But I did have about 30 minutes to do a sketch before we were due back on the bus. My friend Liz was sketching in front of me.

Back to the Met

 With the direct watercolor challenge posts I missed posting a few other sketches. A few weeks back the weather forecast was for possible storms, so the NYC Urban Sketchers had Central Park as a destination but a backup of the Metropolitan Museum of Art if the forecast didn't improve. We ended up in the Met sketching Greek and Roman sculptures. I did one the captured a bit of the inside of the museum and the outside too. The museum rules state dry media only, but this isn't always enforced. I sketched in watercolor pencils and then used my waterbrush. The guards didn't seem to mind that, but stopped people who were using a watercolor palette.

The group broke for lunch at noon and I was regretting that we were indoors, because of course there were no storms outside. 

Luckily at lunch Marion told me about the display on the rooftop garden at the Met...so I went up to check it out. It was wonderful! The space was designed by American artist Lauren Halsey specifically for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. Apparently they select a new artist to design the garden space each year. My thanks to another sketcher, Elana Amity for safely leading me thru the museum and up to the garden on the roof. Lauren had created an exhibit that merged Egyptian architecture with a bit of Black American Life amid the backdrop of NYC skyscrapers. I was able to get some outdoor sketching done!

Here is what I sketched.

Here are a few photos of the exhibit.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

On Saturday the NYC Urban Sketchers met at the Petrie Court of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This section of the museum has som beautiful sculptures and looks out to Central Park.

I didn't remember to write down the title of this sculpture but it caught my eye with the dark sculpture behind it and the windows looking out at the park.

Later in the afternoon I sketched "Perseus with the Head of Medusa." I loved that there was someone taking a photo so there was the contrast of the old with the new.

Takumen Ramen

Last Friday I joined a few friends for a trip into the city to go to the Winslow Homer exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We hit a lot of traffic going into the city so we got there late.  We saw the wonderful Homer exhibit and stayed a while to see a few more things, but then left to go to a Japanese stationary store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn where we spent some time walking around. Our final stop was Takumen, a ramen restaurant in Long Island City. I had been there once before and we've been talking about going back for a long time. With the pandemic we hadn't been able to do that. 

We were there for an early dinner so there were no people blocking my view over the counter and into the kitchen...so I knew I had a good view to sketch. I started sketching before dinner but finished the ink part of the sketch after dinner. I did the watercolor at home.

The Homer exhibit had a lot of his wonderful watercolors. Here are a few.

 

What Are You Missing?

The afternoon part of the NYC Urban Sketching event on Saturday was to sketch something that you miss in the time of this pandemic. There were so many things...family, friends, travel, gatherings... Instead I focused on something in NYC that I miss, and that is sketching in museums. This was done from a photo I had taken at the Metropolitan Museum on one of our trips there to sketch. This beautiful statue is in the American Wing and I have sketched it before.

NYC Urban Sketchers Go Virtual

After missing our sketching day last weekend the NYC Urban Sketchers came up with a plan for us to "meet" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and have a virtual sketch event. For the morning we followed the museum's link and found European oil paintings from the 1800s. Our task was to pick two paintings and incorporate elements of each of them into one new painting or sketch. I picked Auguste Renoir's "Madam Georges Carpentier" and took one of the daughters who happened to be sitting on her dog and combined it with Camille Corot's painting "A Woman Reading."

Sadly we couldn't all meet for lunch, but in the afternoon we selected something from the Met's Lehman Collection to sketch. I selected this sculpture of Saint James the Less which was once part of an altar with 5 sculptures of saints who were deciples of Jesus. This was created in either Northeast France or Southern Netherlands somewhere around 1450-60.

All of the sketches were posted on the NYC Urban Sketchers Facebook page. We had sketchers from all over the world join with us today. It was a fun way of sketching together.

A Trip to the Met - Part 2

A friend from Long Island had joined us at the Met on Saturday so after lunch I asked her where she wanted to sketch. I suggested either we do more armor or go to the Temple of Dendur which is one of my favorite places in the museum. It was crowded but we were able to sit comfortably on the wall around the room and there was a lovely view out the window. Robin was very happy there. I was working in my Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook which is 8 x 10...so open across two pages it was 10 x 16 and I filled most of the two pages. Robin had to leave early but I sat there with my watercolors and ink and sketched until the group was meeting at 3:00. I was happy with the way the sketch turned out. 

A Trip to the Met - Part 1

On Saturday the NYC Urban Sketchers met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to sketch. There was an exhibit that was ending soon called "The Last Knight." This exhibit is reported to be the most ambition North American loan exhibition of European arms and armor. Much of the work has never been on view outside Europe and includes some of Emperor Maximilian I's own armor, including a suit of armor that he wore at the age of 12. There were also tapestries, sculptures, glass, toys, and manuscripts.

I got attracted by this armor as I came into the first room. When I read the information about it it said that it was the first combat armor worn by Maximilian I. I set my stool out of the way of traffic and started sketching. My original plan was to do sketches of several of the suits of armor on the same page, but I was nearly done with the first one and this young girl came along. She seemed so intent standing there that I couldn't resist sketching her near the display and the next thing I knew the sketch had grown to include a man looking at a relief of a coat of arms. This probably took me nearly 1 1/2 hours. I did it with watercolor pencils. The museum prefers that you use dry media, but the guards often overlook that especially in galleries where the objects are behind glass. I did take out my water brush and use that and the guard didn't say anything. 

I did a sketch traveling in on the Long Island Railroad in the morning. If I leave from my home station the ride takes about 1 hr 20 min and if I am lucky there is usually someone sitting across the aisle from me that I can sketch.

Armor at the Met

Today the NYC Urban Sketchers met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to sketch in the Arms & Armor section. This is such a fun place to sketch with so many sketching possibilities. I started with one of the samurai warriors. The museum's policy about materials isn't really enforced in all areas and I have always been able to use any kind of medium in this section...probably because almost everything is behind glass. I used my Lamy pen, a Zebra Fine Line Brush Pen and a few assorted watercolor pencils.

After lunch I headed back to sketch another suit of armor. This one had a lot of detail to it. I liked the hearts by the elbows and knees. I also did a separate helmet since I had a little time left before our "show and tell."

Inktober 2018 - Day 20 & Sketching at the Met

Today I went into the city to meet the NYC Urban Sketchers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I took the Long Island Railroad in so I had a good opportunity to do a few ink sketches for Day 20 of Inktober 2018.

#inktober, #inktober2018

Our plan today was to sketch in the American Wing at the Met which is a wide open, light-filled room with lots of sculptures. But most of it was closed due to a party that was being held there tonight. That section was roped off but you could still see across the room so I sketched a statue with some Tiffany glass windows behind it. The museum has a "dry media" policy, so I worked in watercolor pencils for my first sketch and then used my water brush. Nobody complained. The policy is very often not enforced but I have been there when a guard came over and told me I could only use dry media. I don't know what the title of the sculpture is since they wouldn't let us into the area that was roped off.

I started a second sketch before lunch and finished it after lunch. It was done by William Wetmore Story of Cleopatra. I did this one in graphite pencil. Right after I finished it they announced that all visitors had to leave the American Wing so that they could set up for the function that was taking place there.

We headed from there to a section of the museum that has European sculptures. This time I focused on the view of the room, the people and the sculptures.

Sunday in NYC

On Sunday I went into NYC with two other artist friends. We met at the Met Breuer which is a small museum that is part of the Metropolitan Museum. The exhibits here are more modern/contemporary than you would find at the Met itself. We viewed sketches that were in the exhibit Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the Scofield Thayer Collection. It was a great exhibit and you could easily see the influence of each on the work of the other.

Then we went to the Neue Galleri where we had lunch and then saw another exhibit of the works of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. These included some nudes, portraits and landscapes. It was wonderful. This was one of the paintings on exhibit by Klimt and the detail and amount of gold and silver in this was just so impressive. I had only seen this in books and it just amazed me.

We had a little time to walk through a bit of Central Park and stop by the boat pond to do a quick sketch. I did the ink on location and started to add the color with watercolor pencils but we had to leave to head to the next part of our day.

Our final stop was the Flute Bar for a Dr. Sketchy session. I have posted some sketches from their events before. Basically they have what is a burlesque model that poses in several outfits. Our model for the afternoon was Tiger Bay who I believe was Miss Coney Island 2017. Several other NYC Urban Sketchers happened to be there too. Costumes, music, a model, contests and friends. What more could you want? Here are a few somewhat risqué sketches from yesterday afternoon. Quick poses and longer poses. Tiger Bay posed in one costume made of tiny pom-poms, one made of feathers, and a final one of leather.

We left here on a 7:40 am train and  got back at nearly 10:00 pm. It was a full day!