Paper and Threads

It was a lovely cool morning and I decided that an early visit to the Met was a perfect way to spend the morning.  I stopped at the Southeast Corner for a quick sketch for my 10 Block series of NYC journal pages and to wait for the Museum to open.  At this corner, I sketched just one window of the windows from the Greek and Roman Galleries - and the amorphous stone sculpture that sits among the bushes. 

Inside, I wandered through more of the exhibits in the new Greek and Roman Galleries and saw the chariot for the first time.  I found one more marble figure to sketch and then went to find a small iron hunting dog in another part of the Museum.  I saw it previously and loved the shape.  Unfortunately, the body is longer than my page was wide and I didn't realize it until the end.  I will resketch it from photos so I have a better image.

I sketched the marble figure with a colored pencil and the dog with a Derwent Sketching Pencil (light wash).  I was then able to use my Niji waterbrush to add the gray color to the dog.  I love playing with those pencils!  And they are great for Museum sketching. 

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  Memorial Day weekend in the US, which means 3 days off work - and beautiful weather.  Many New Yorkers escape for the country or open beach houses.  Others, like us, love the city during the summer - it seems slower and neighborhood restaurants are less crowded. 

Yesterday I did another lesson from my Anne Elsworth Watercolor Skills Workbook:  Painting an all-white still life with a monochromatic color scheme.

Today my husband and I took a late afternoon subway ride to Battery Park - I had NEVER been on the Staten Island Ferry - a free 30 minute ride across New York Harbor.  Here are two pictures that I took from the railing - one on the way out of the ferry slip and the second one as we were returning to Manhattan.  I loved every minute of the ride, including the path past the Statue of Liberty.

After our ferry ride, we stopped for dinner at Battery Gardens - and sat on their outdoor patio overlooking the harbor.  I was able to sketch another table - and also do a 3 minute sketch of one of the huge sailboats that quickly passed our table.

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 No work today and beautiful sunshine.  My husband and I wandered through a fantastic Picasso lithograph exhibit at Helly Nahmad Gallery and then I stopped 10 blocks from home to add a page to my NYC Journal.  This really interesting little store has a very narrow facade, and is squeezed between two large buildings on E. 78th St.  The large banner attracts attention from Madison Avenue and the very sedate sign next to the gate says that it is a "unique, chic haven for brides." 

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  May 19th:  I sketched my EDM Challenge while at the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday on the World Wide Sketchcrawl.  Rocks are a little hard to find in my immediate neighborhood and the weather was too awful to go into Central Park to paint one of the big rocks.  So I painted 3 big rocks that make up the side wall of the Temple of Dendur (15 B.C.E.).  This allowed me to really focus on the engraved drawings - which are wonderful.  There are approximately 5-6 figures down each side of the Temple and I don't think that any two are the same.

May 20th:  I walked 10 blocks from home, looked around, and sketched a small piece of the roofline of the Jewish Museum on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.  There was a man sitting on the one of the benches painting the facade in a wonderfully loose, impressionistic style.  I sat on the curb (because 5th Avenue was closed to traffic) and tried to just capture a little of the essence of the complicated architecture and decoration.  I love the aged copper portions.

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  We spent several hours in Central Park with my son, daughter-in-law and grandson Robbie in celebration of Mother's Day.  The weather was beautiful and the Great Lawn was full of families and softball players.  I sketched the city skyline looking south from the Great Lawn at 86th St.

 I still hate the rough watercolor paper. This sketch was done in my NYC Journal using Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils.  The piece of subway map that is above my sketch is my addition to the journal to cover the gap between signatures.

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