30 Day Challenge - Day 25 - Korean Statue & More

Yesterday the NYC Urban Sketchers met at the Brooklyn Museum to sketch. There were some interesting exhibits. I knew I needed to do my gouache painting for Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" challenge. I wandered up to the Korean Art exhibit and found this statue. It was one of two on display and it is a boy attendant from the Joseon dynasty in Korea during the 18th Century.

After lunch I headed down to the lobby. The combination of this statue, the brick wall and the archway had interested me when I came into the museum, but I saved it for the second half of the day realizing that the statue itself was going to be a challenge. The statue is "The Fallen Angels" by Salvatore Albano. Marble statues are always intimidating as I have to think about what colors to use on the white that will show the shading and the shape. Then this particular statue had such strange contortions of the bodies of the fallen angels. It was very difficult to figure out what body part belonged to each angel. I ended up sketching the statue with a ultramarine blue watercolor pencil and then going over that with a light wash water-soluble graphite pencil. Watercolors were added later.

As usual the group gathered at the end of the day for libations and to share our artwork at a local restaurant/bar called Tooker's Alley. The bar is artist friendly and they even have blank pages in the back of their menu for patrons to draw something to leave for their archives. I didn't sketch in the menu. These are three of the other sketchers who were seated across from me.

Welcome to Spring & The Final Part of the Urban Sketching Day

Happy First Day of Spring!!!
 In the spirit of the day I wanted to paint some outdoor flowers today. My good friend and fellow sketcher, Susan, who lives nearby is always ready to share her garden treasures with me. I called her this morning to check that something was in bloom in her garden and she told me to come on over. She works from home, so we chatted for a little while and then she went inside to work while I painted her crocuses, hellebores, and heather. Luckily it was sunny and warm enough to spend some time in the garden without freezing. Thanks, Susan!

On most occasions when the NYC Urban Sketchers gather, we meet at the end of our sketching day to share our work over drinks. I think we had about 20 people with us at the Brooklyn Museum and we headed out at about 4 to Tooker's Alley, a bar nearby. They open at 4 so we didn't worry about it being too crowded for us...and Mark always lets them know we are coming. Once everyone has a drink or whatever they order we start sharing our sketches from the day. It is always fun to see how everyone else captures the same or almost the same views. Some people do a lot of quick sketches and some people complete one longer piece. We have 2 rules when we share...you can't say anything negative about someone's sketches and you can't say anything negative about your own. The second rule is the hard one. LOL

In addition to sharing our sketches, almost everyone immediately whips out a sketchbook and starts sketching the other sketchers at the table or the other patrons where we are. It is good because the other sketchers usually don't get up and move...although they move around some talking to people to their right or left. I was able to get two sketches each with several people seated opposite me.

As you can see from the three days of posting...it was quite a busy day!