Classic Chevy Truck

Last week a friend posted that there was going to be a car show in Patchogue hosted by the Patchogue Fire Department and that her dad's Chevy truck, Ol' Gold was going to be on display. I knew I wanted to sketch at the show. When I got there I ran into Cheryl and she asked me to sketch his gold Chevy. I can just imagine Paulie zipping around town with his lovely wife at his side.  

On a very sad note, one of our popular NYC Urban Sketchers, Lewis Gutterman passed away on Monday after complications from surgery. In my mind, Lewis was like our social mayor. He and his wife, Cathy were so friendly and kind to everyone. They helped organize many of our social events and trips and ran the NYC Westchester branch of our group. If you were a new member, Lewis took you under his wing and made sure that your first experience with our group was a good one. He secretly did portraits of the members from photos that he took and then presented them to that member at our show & tell meetings. I have one that he did of me. Lewis always took photos of everyone with their artwork during show and tell and often had the photos printed to give out to the members. A nice word for everyone was his trademark. His joy, sense of humor, and love of people will be missed. 

RIP, Lewis.

Olish's Farmstand

I like stopping at Olish's Farm in Eastport. There are always fun, colorful displays.

 

Lighthouse #2

 I got back to sketch the Fire Island Lighthouse at Robert Moses State Park again. The clouds in the sky were so amazing. This was the view from my beach chair.

Hog Farm Evening

On Wednesday the Patchogue Sketch Club went to Hog Farm in Brookhaven. We met at 6 so we would have some light for sketching. There was a constant flow of people coming to pick up their farm shares or just shop for the fresh delights. It was a good night for sketching.

Lighthouse 1

We had some warm weather so I headed down to Robert Moses Beach the other day. Since I really hadn't been there to sketch the lighthouse all summer I sat and did a direct watercolor of it before I went down on the beach. 

 

Exquisite Garden

 Today was "Arts on Terry" a fun, annual event presented by the Patchogue Arts Council. It is a contemporary art fair highlighting 300+ artists from a variety of Long Island Arts organizations. It included a full day of art exhibits, demonstrations, PAC Paint Showdown, live painters, family-friendly activities, live music, poetry, and performances. Two of my art groups exhibitied at the event and I had work showing in both groups.

As we have previously, the Patchogue Sketch Club did a collaborative project. Each participating member was given a panel on which to paint a garden. The panels each had half circles on both sides to be halves of flowers on their panels to match the half circles on the panel in each direction. The 10 panels were then hung together. Here is the completed project.

Artists left to right: Liz Dow, Mariann Anderson, Christine Hanson, Pat Sweeney, Laurie Samara-Schlageter, Rosanne O'Reilly, Linda Prentiss, Joan Tavolott, Jennifer Mesticky

I took photos of it in sections too.

This is the section I painted. Most people used acrylics but my panel was coated with watercolor ground and I painted it with watercolors. The panel to the right of mine was also painted with watercolors.

The project was a lot of fun to work on, and a wonderful surprise when the panels were finally hung together!

Here are photos of a few of the paintings that were done for the live paint showdown.

General Store

Riding through Eastport I found a general store with yellow umbrellas outside. How could I resist? 

Beachfront

 This is a direct watercolor done down along the bay in Patchogue. These three houses stood together right up by the Great South Bay. I'm sure they must have great views, especially for sunrise.

Trip to Norwalk

On Saturday my friend, Suzala's husband was going to a robotics competition in Norwalk, CT.  She wanted to go along and sketch in the town. We invited another friend who lives close to CT to join us for the day. Suzala drove us around so we could see some of the sights that she though would be good sketch locations. We all loved this spot which is the Norwalk River Railroad Bridge. None of us was fast enough to capture a train crossing the bridge, but we had a lot of fun sketching it. I knew it was a bit much to tackle doing it directly in watercolor (which Suzala did) so I sketched it directly in ink and added watercolor. We were glad we picked this location because we found out later that this bridge is scheduled to be replaced in the near future. I'm sure the new one won't be as interesting.

In the afternoon I headed up the street to sketch the Sono (South Norwalk) Switch Tower Museum. That staircase was quite a subject. lol The person inside had noticed that I was sketching it and came out to see the sketch when I finished. He liked it enough that he asked if he could take a photo of it. Of course I said yes.

The Garden & Vineyard

Last Friday I took a ride out to Greenport on the North Fork. I haven't been out there in a while and I rode around looking for a location that inspired me. There was a house just outside of the town that I knew I wanted to capture...I just didn't know which part of it to paint. I ended up focusing on part of the garden and a shed. As I started working a woman came out into the garden. I was sitting across the street in the shade of a tree and I asked her if she minded if I sketched her garden. She said I could as long as I let her see it when it was finished. She liked it so much that she bought the painting. Then she asked if I would be interested in doing another painting of the garden hiding behind the hedges. Inside there was a small fountain in a small koi pond, several seating areas and flowered areas. I plan to go back soon to do that painting for her. 

On the way home I decided to stop and do a quick painting in my accordion sketchbook that has just paintings and sketches of  North Fork locations. This is the Paumanok Vineyard in Aquebogue.

Garden Wall With Flowers

Last Wednesday, the Patchogue Sketch Club got permission to sketch at a lovely private garden in Patchogue. The location was in a spot pretty much hidden from most people. It was off of a busy service road of one of our highways. At the end of a long driveway was a house with property that went back to the water on Palace Brook Lake (which most of us didn't even know was there). The property is beautifully landscaped around a small section of the lake with walled areas of flowers, a dock, a rowboat, etc. There was a subject to make everyone happy! It was a definite respite from the madness of Sunrise Highway which was so close that the traffic could be heard. Apparently there was a big wooded area at one time between the road and the house, but as the highway was built much of it was used for the service road so the wooded buffer was cut down. Sadly, the owners are selling the property so we won't get a chance to sketch there again.

I sketched one of the walled areas and the flowers.

Facing the Marina

The red building is a private marina along the water in Sayville. At one time a friend docked her boat there and we went in to sketch. She no longer keeps her boat there so I have to sketch it from the outside.

 

Beach Days

 We have been lucky here in NY because the weather has stayed quite mild. I even go to go to the beach this past week. It is always a great place for inspiration, so I'm glad I had some painting supplies with me at Robert Moses Beach.

I just tried to focus on the wave itself for this little painting.

This lady is a real pro. She brought along her wind shield to stay warm.

By the Water

 

I headed down to the bay in Sayville the other day. It was a bit cool for the beach but fine to sit and sketch. I even got to sketch some local geese that were hanging out there.

Gouache Workshop

 As I mentioned yesterday I took a gouache workshop this past weekend that was offered by the NYC Urban Sketchers. It was given by Maru Godes from Madrid and held near the model boat pond in Central Park. Originally a workshop was offered in the morning only but there were enough people interested so that she agreed to host an afternoon workshop too. That's the workshop I took. 

Maru paints in very bright, sometimes unusual colors.  She began the workshop having us use the gouache with assorted amounts of water to see how it covers the paper each way. Then we used assorted materials like colored pencils, graphite, and neocolors to texturize the dry gouache. Our next assignment was to use non-local colors and a dry material in a similar color combined together. Here I used gouache and colored pencil.

For the next sketch I used non-local color, some colored pencil, and neocolors. You can see that I was able to add the texture in a similar shade of colored pencil or neocolor. Lighter colors show well on top of darker gouache.

Our last piece was a larger painting combining gouache, the texture techniques, and the additional materials we had with us. In front of us was the model boat pond and a man making giant bubbles. At first I felt my painting was too similar to just watercolor, so I worked on it more. Maru kept telling us to "use less water."

Here it is when I stopped at first...very watercolor-like.

Then I used the gouache darker and thicker in areas. You can see some of the texture from the colored pencil and the neocolors I added. I stayed true to the local color.

 

One of the problems I had with the workshop was not anticipating that it would be very hard to sit on my painting chair and be able to juggle all the materials I needed. I should have sat so that I could reach the materials on the ground or brought a small table. It didn't work so well in my lap. I kept dropping things and couldn't reach a lot of what I wanted to use.

Maru is a really good teacher and I definitely enjoyed the class. 

Model Boat Pond

On Saturday I signed up to take a gouache workshop in Central Park. Suzala and I got there early so we could sketch before the workshop started. This was done directly with watercolor and is about 5 x 7.

Bar Area

I went to Robert Moses Beach recently and was talking to a friend on the phone when I arrived. I ended up keeping her on speaker phone and sketching a scene before I went down on the sand. This year several of the state beaches have opened a bar area near their concession stands. This one has palm trees and a yellow canopy over the bar area. A lady came and sat on one of the stone benches and I included her in the sketch.

Proudly Flying

I love that there are so many houses around here that fly the American flag like this one in Sayville.

 

Floral Bouquet

While I was at Pat's garden (see previous post) I collected some of her flowers and dried Queen Anne's Lace. They were simple blooms but I thought they made a pretty arrangement. The black-eyed Susans were a little dry but they added a nice pop of yellow. This was done on a grey page in my Stillman & Birn Nova Trio that I received from some special friends (you know who you are). It was done in mostly watercolor but the white is gouache.

 

Blue Door

 One of the members of the Patchogue Sketch Club invites the group to her garden to sketch every year. This was our last visit for this year since it it getting dark earlier now. We tried to meet extra early but some of the sketchers work and can't get there as early as some of us. This is the door to one of her Pat's storage buildings. She has a gorgeous garden. I'll show some photos below this painting.

Ralph's

I don't know if Ralph's is in other areas beside the northeast, but we have quite a few around. This one is in Patchogue and wasn't open yet.

 

Along Brown's River Road

 I've sketched many times along Brown's River Road by Sayville and Bayport, usually focusing on the boats. This time I focused on the sheds and structures instead.