Inktober Day 20

 The Inktober prompt was "still life with three objects." My onion, cut pepper, and delicata squash worked for this one. Unusual for me that I didn't add color.

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Starbucks and Cinco de Mayo

The Patchogue Sketch Club was meeting, but the forecast was once again for rain so we moved to an indoor location. I brought along some fruit to use for sketching and Mark and Teresa sketched it too.  

For the sketch above I used a sketchbook I had bought in Venice. It is leather and had paper that I was told was watercolor paper. It is a bit textured and absorbs the watercolor as well as the ink. Some of it shows on the back side of the paper. I don't think it has a lot of sizing like our paper here usually does. 

Jerry and I celebrate Cinco de Mayo with tacos from The Fat Boy Burrito Company in Patchogue. Luckily I decided to do take-out and called ahead. There was a line outside. The food is very good!

Veggie Continuous Line Sketch

I like practicing continuous line sketches. It makes me really observe what I am looking at to see the connection to the next item and their relationship and size. This was done for a Creative Spark Scavenger Hunt. You can see the actual continuous line sketch with no color added posted below. 

Lenny Bruno Display

 This is a display of assorted vegetables in front of the windows at Lenny Bruno Farm in Manorville. I liked that you could see some of the items through the windows too.

East End Farmland

 Right now it is usually a good time to head out east to the North Fork of Long Island. This was near Wading River. A lot of the farms have cabbages, brussel sprouts, and other vegetables still growing in the fields. They add a lot of nice texture to the landscapes. There are great skies at this time of year too.

Venice 2024 - Part 6 - Burano, Rialto Market, Vegetable Stand, Florist

I can't go to Venice without spending a day in Burano. The colors of the houses just sing!!! It is about a 45 minute vaporetto ride to Burano, but first you have to get to the other side of the island where the Fondamenta Nuovo is located. I was up and out early to take the 25 minute walk to the vaporetto stop.

The colors are so bright and wonderful in Burano. I did one sketch in the morning after arriving and then spent some time walking around and taking photos. It was sad to see that there are so many more houses in disrepair than last year. Many of them look abandoned. I am sure they take a real beating being so open to the water of the lagoon, the alta aqua, and the weather.

After a fairly quick lunch I returned to painting. There was no way I would go there and only do one painting. By the time I finished this painting I just couldn't sit on my stool any more. I needed to get up and stretch my legs and get the blood flowing again. I did some wandering through the shops but bought nothing...even though the lace items are always so tempting.

The next day I headed up to the Rialto Market again. I wanted to do a double-page spread with small scenes and items from the market. It is hard to plan the composition of the page. You need to decide on what to sketch and leave space for a heading. I started with sketches of two different vegetable stands. Most of the produce always looks so good...and I like finding things that I don't see at home.

This vendor had a wonderful assortment of wild mushrooms. He attracted a lot of people.

Then I saw the florist who always sells right by the entrance to where the fish vendors are located. He always has such beautiful flowers. I liked the contrast of the softness of the flowers and the architectural structure of the arches. I showed him the sketch when it was done and he was so pleased to see it. Of course I came back to the apartment with a small bouquet of flowers that helped me add more interest to the page.

When I got home I added the signs, and a few more details like the strawberry, the melons, and some of the flowers from the bouquet. The final additions were the lemon and the clementine at the bottom of the page.

My thanks to Brenda Swenson for the beautiful pages she has done that helped inspire me to do a spread like this. I followed some of her suggestions.

 

Veggies

 The Patchogue Sketch Club is back indoors now at the Pat/Med Library. There isn't enough daylight left after our 6:30 meeting time. On Wednesday we had vegetables as a them. It was fun to see some colorful items like the purple cauliflower and the radishes.

Produce for Sale

This is a piece I did on location with my plein air group at Andrews Family Farm in Wading River. I completed most of it the first time we were there but I decided that the foreground needed something. We went back for a return visit and I added some of the flower bouquets that they had for sale as well as the hanging Indian corn. 

WIP Fruits & Veggies

 My plein air group visited Andrews Family Farm in Wading River this week. It is one of my favorite places to paint. The owners are so welcoming. The painting isn't finished yet, but I cropped this part and used it for the creativespark.art Scavenger Hunt...two of the items were fruit and veggies. Although I painted there for nearly 2 hours I need to do more work on this. I will post it when it is completed.

Red Pepper

 For the scavenger hunt on creativespark.art one of the items was something red. I like painting peppers so I did. This was done with inktense pencils.

Inktober Day 8 - Fruit and Veggies

One good thing about liking to eat fruit and veggies is that it always provides sketching materials.

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Andrews Farm

With all my Inktober sketches and travel sketches I have quite a few things I did a while ago that weren't posted yet (or I don't think they were) like this painting done at Andrews Farm. The Andrews family has such a wonderful place and they are always willing to let us come and paint or sketch there. I usually paint the views outside, but Debby had this inside section set up so nicely I just had to paint it. Doesn't all that fresh produce look tempting? I never leave without buying some of her veggies and fruit. This is 8 x 10.

Farmers Market Sketches

On the Urban Sketchers flickr the weekly theme is fruit.

Where better to find fruit to sketch than the farmers market? So I headed over to the Sayville Farmers Market this morning. I wanted to do some close up sketches rather than doing the booths.

First I sketched the produce at Stan & Pat's booth.

Then I went over to "Fly In & Pig Out" run by Sweet Melissa, of Sweet Melissa's Dips and Catering in Rocky Point. She sells produce that she says is mostly Italian...I kept hearing about figs in her discussion with other shoppers. I guess I'll have to go back and try them. She had some interesting curling Italian Squash. There was cheddar cheese cauliflower too. The dips looked and sounded interesting...you could taste them if you wanted. Too bad my hands were so busy.

Melissa was very friendly and I will have to visit there again. 

My thanks to both vendors for allowing me to sketch their merchandise!