

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens
When the weather gets cold, NYC Urban Sketchers turns to some familiar, indoor standbys. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has a gorgeous conservatory with a variety of environments and plants to sketch. A bonus: it's a twenty minute walk from my apartment to the south entrance. I nearly got a sketch in every room! I began in the Bonsai room, which houses only a small portion of their collection at a time (approximately 30 will be on display at any given time. They have about 350.)


Bryant Park: Revisited
One early December Friday afternoon between work and an event in the evening I decided to swing by Bryant Park for some sketching. Their winter village and skating rink had been erected, but to my surprise the tree lighting was that night so no one was allowed on the rink (alas, no skater sketches this time around!). Before entering the park, I sketched a favorite view down 42nd street, of the Chrysler Building and Grand Central. After the sun set, I sketched this view of som


Merry Christmas from Rockefeller Center!
Early in December, New York City Urban Sketchers visited Rockefeller Center. Naturally, I had to paint the tree! After painting the tree from the side (having not seen any other sketchers in the crowd), I found some sketchers with a great spot, front and center. One of my fellow artists had sweet-talked a guard into letting us sketch from inside a gated area they were otherwise mostly not letting people into (thanks, Suzala!). We were also joined for a bit by Cindy McEnery, a


Times Square
In November, Urban Sketchers celebrated its ten year anniversary! To celebrate, we did an international, 24 hour sketch crawl. What that meant was that chapters across the world pledged to participate and set up sketch crawls in their respective cities. Every minute of November 11th, there would be at least one chapter sketching. To participate, the NYC chapter decided to sketch what is possibly the most iconic Manhattan view: Times Square! It was freezing (the first truly co


Beacon: again
I realized that last month when I put up my sketches from Mt. Beacon, I missed the one sketch I did on main street. Though I didn't know when I chose the subject, my friend's parents were married in that church!