Happy Easter

 I am slowly going through my local area and sketching the trees in bloom. It is hard to do the white/barely pink ones since it is so hard to define the blossoms. Here is the latest.

Fresh Snow

Luckily the snowstorm wasn't as bad as predicted right here. Our temperatures were a little warmer down on the south shore of Long Island, and the snow changed to rain and sleet for a while through the night before changing back to snow. We got a few inches but it was wet and messy. I didn't need to go out at all so I stayed home and sketched the view out the living room window. This was done with watercolors and white gouache in my toned tan Strathmore sketchbook. 

Still Life Trio

 Sometimes I just don't get out to do a sketch...yes, that happens. I had a bit of car trouble so I decided to stay home until I was able to have my car looked at. Of course I had to paint something...so I looked around and found the last of my juicy tomatoes from the farmstand. The onion and garlic jumped in and I had what I was looking for. Please enjoy!

Prague Sketch #2

For the afternoon session of the NYC Urban Sketchers virtual event on Saturday our aim was to do a night sketch of Prague. There were a lot of images if you Googled "Prague at night," which was what I did to find a reference. I haven't done too many nocturnal scenes so it was fun to try to get the feel of the evening atmosphere. I think I went a little too dark with the night sky and then had a hard time getting the trees to show, even doing them with a Sharpie marker.

Garlic

We are having really hot weather so the last few days when I have some free time I've been spending it at the pool. Usually Jerry does his exercising and walking in the early part of the day when he has energy. Then he relaxes in the afternoon. That's when I scoot out for a while if I can. I leave him everything he needs including a cell phone in case he needs me. The pool is 2 minutes away. My sketching time is pretty much done in the evening so I either use photos or something I can use or a still life. Today it is garlic. Not very exciting especially since this one didn't have much color to the skins. This is small and blowing it up shows where the watercolor didn't really cover the background well. But I post perfect and imperfect here.

Shropshire

I am enjoying all the virtual travels to locations picked by the organizers of #VirtualSketch. This is the Iron Bridge in Shropshire, UK. I did it directly in watercolors so it will also fit into the #30x30DirectWatercolor Challenge.

Hanging Basket

Lately I have had a few minutes to sit on my patio when things are quiet here. So when my SIL was here the other day she agreed to stay with Jerry while I went out shopping. I bought two hanging baskets to add a little color out there. The view otherwise is green, green, green, with a few tree trunks added in. I did this directly in watercolor so I could add it as my Day 8 painting for #30x30DirectWatercolor.

Sketchbook Revival Lessons

There are all kinds of art projects, lessons, and workshops taking place online while we are all doing our social distancing at home. I've signed up for Sketchbook Revival with Karen Abend. She has sponsored free lessons before and have enjoyed some of them. For each revival she invites a group of artist to each do a lesson. I watched the first session which was in several parts but never got any of the activities done for that one. I may go back to it yet.

I am being choosy about which lessons I do. Carla Sondheim did a fun lesson the other day doing sketches from blobs of paint. You do some random blobs of paint with a knife and a scraper and then look at the shape turning it into something...sometimes you have to turn the blob in a different direction to "see" something. It was fun to do. Here are my blobs.

Yesterday Tamara Laporte did a lesson on creating "quirky birds." I had a lot of fun with this and will probably try another one. I think they would make fun prints for cards. This combined watercolors, posca pens, white gel pen, and acrylic paints. 

Sketch Club at Home - My Dishes

 Since we can no longer meet as a group because of the virus restrictions, the Patchogue Sketch Club picked a theme and the members were able to do our sketch at some time during the day. The theme for yesterday's sketching while practicing social distancing at home was "My Dishes," done for the Patchogue Sketch Club's Quarantiine Edition. This was done with a Sketch & Wash pencil and watercolors.

Robert Moses Dunes

On Monday I headed over to Robert Moses State Park. It was easy to do socially isolated sketching there even though there were a lot of people walking around. I just opened the windows and sat in my car. Most of the people were walking along the boardwalk to the lighthouse, but I decided that would mean encountering too many people on a narrow surface.

Holiday Decoration

On Sunday I went to a fundraiser at a historic home in Bellport. The Bellport Garden Club sponsored it and decorated the house with decorations mostly using greenery. The arrangements were very well priced and sold fairly quickly so by the time I got there most of the really good arrangements were already sold. I was hoping for a wreath but ended up with a tiny potted bit of greenery and berries. That was fine because I really didn't have a lot of room for anything...and this made a nice sketch.

Cold Spring Harbor

For some reason I forgot to post this from a few weeks ago. I went with a friend to Cold Spring Harbor. She painted the view out into the harbor. I liked the view toward the road from the fishing dock looking at the bulkhead and the small boat.

Short Beach

I had a few things to do north of me and when I finished I drove over to Short Beach in Smithtown. Usually I paint the view over the marshland, but this time I liked that I could see a few masts of the sailboats looking in this direction instead.

In the Garden

My plein air group met at a private garden in Sayville on Tuesday to paint. I was attracted to the purple flowers.

Sally

Our model at portraits was Sally this week. This was my last portrait session for a while because I will be traveling soon. I still haven't worked out posting to blogspot on my iPad so I don't know if I will be able to keep the blog going while I am gone. I will post to Facebook and Instagram.

Still Life with Fruit

Our Tuesday portrait group wasn't able to get a model so we decided to do a still life. A few of us brought in assorted items including fruit.

By the Beautiful Sea

I was down at Smith Point Beach at the end of Fire Island on Friday. It was a beautiful day, although too windy to sketch outside. The dunes and the water attracted me of course.

The gulls were right next to my car, so I sketched them too.

Driving to the beach there were a lot of deer at the entrance to the parking lot. They were pretty tame and were coming right up to the cars. We had a bit of a traffic jam. lol There were about a dozen deer in the area.

Pt Jeff Charm

Along the water on Beach Street in Port Jefferson you can find some large homes and some smaller cottage-like homes like this one. I like the lobster traps that give it that rustic feeling.

Kevin

On Tuesday my portrait group met in Bellport. Kevin was our model for the morning and was great. We haven't drawn him before so he was a nice change. He reminded me of Graham Nash, of CSN if you remember them. I had time to do one longer painting of him and then a quick 10 minute ink sketch. The second sketch look more like him.

Bayport Beach View

After doing the narrow sketch that I posted yesterday I still had 1/2 of the page left in my sketchbook so I looked for a scene that would fit the size (about 4 x 9). This was done at the town dock next to Bayport Beach.