RAMBLING  SKETCHER

Earlier this month, I was thrilled to go to visit Birmingham, Alabama for a weekend. I lived there for a year, and though I was specifically visiting for a friend's* wedding, I was happy to see the rest of my Bama friends and do some sketching while I was in town! Here's the first sketch, done in downtown Birmingham the night I flew into town. The marquee is for a store that has since closed, but the sign is still fantastic. Though it's called "New Ideal" I liked how the tree

A fun thing about working in theatre is having a lot of nerdy, nerdy friends that always have fun projects afoot. In this case, my friend Tiffany (who is pretty involved in the Sherlockian society in New York) was running a Sherlock Holmes weekend on Governor's Island. She wanted to kick off Sunday with a sketching hour, with her modeling, dressed as a steampunk take on Sherlock Holmes (worth noting: she is a costumer). Once I had agreed to co-host that event with her (as her

I get a lot of questions about my kit, and what colors I use, so I thought I'd do a post on my materials and the palettes I use. This is my usual kit, though I add as necessary depending on where I'm going, or if I'm working bigger. Brushes, large to small: Princeton Neptune Synthetic Squirrel #12 Round Princeton Neptune Synthetic Squirrel #10 Round Princeton Neptune Synthetic Squirrel #8 Round Princeton Neptune Synthetic Squirrel #6 Round Princeton Neptune Synthetic Squirrel

Early on, I knew I wanted to do a 360 degree panorama of the park. This posed some challenges, like the fact that I've never done something like that before. Also that the perspective changes as you turn. Also that I wanted to draw it from a fictionally far distance away to get in the tops of the buildings. Most of these are admittedly problems of my own making that could have been solved if I had a different vision for the end results. I did a few sketches and paintings to p

I learned early on in my time at the park that sitting near the carousel is a joy, because it spouts French music and it feels like a tiny bit of Paris in New York. The carousel itself is hard to paint, not only because it's top is taller than you'd think, but because it moves! I did these two back to back and have bits I like of each of them. Which is your favorite? *All images in this post belong to Bryant Park. All of the paintings are theirs and they will not be for sale

Even though I tend to edit people out of my paintings, I did a few all about people and some extra ones using them as a focus. This is an adorable family (I think two sisters and their children?) who were playing on the lawn my final afternoon. Loved being entertained by the piano program, which had piano players come out and play for two hours every day, Monday-Friday. Here's Kuni Mikami, the Piano Man from my final day! These two weren't sitting together in real life, but I

The Grace Building is another of my favorite buildings surrounding the park. Known for it's iconic curve, best seen along 42nd on either side of the building, I only painted it straight on from the park itself (can you still tell it's curved at the bottom?) The park fills with people at lunch time, and on days the lawn is open, it floods with people stretching, eating, playing, napping, and doing handstands. I was happy to include a few in this next painting! *All images in t

Naturally, the NY Public Library is a huge presence from the park, so I couldn't let two weeks pass without painting it! You'll see it again in my huge panorama, but for now here's two paintings of the back of the library! Here's a quick one, with just the corner of the library and featuring Bryant Park Grill. This next one was more of a saga. I worked on it over two days, I drew it one morning and started painting it, and then finished it several days later, waiting for the

A wonderful thing about instagram is that it gives viewers the opportunity to immediately comment on whatever you're posting. I noticed soon after my very first painting containing the American Radiator Building (one of my own favorite buildings in NYC, and the subject of one of my favorite Georgia O'Keeffe paintings) garnered a unique response. Comments and private messages about the paintings I did containing the building started pouring in, containing a common thread: "Tha

Throughout my two weeks at Bryant Park, basically whenever I didn't know what I wanted to paint next I would just paint the fountain. As a result, I ended up with several versions of it, from a few different angles! This was the first one I did, an early morning sketch with the sun lighting the fountain from behind. Next I did a composition from further away, capturing the full scene and some of the buildings behind the park (I was sitting along the south side of the lawn). I