Saturday at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

Another week with NYC Urban Sketchers! This week we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. As an added bonus, it's only a 30 minute walk from my apartment (and a fifteen minute walk home because I can exit at the other end of the garden!) so I got to enjoy the sunny weather in transit as well as while sketching! We were especially lucky with the lovely day. Painting wasn't feeling easy yesterday; I only got one sketch out that I was really happy with (you'll have to guess which one). Had a great time though, the weather was great and great to see everyone enjoying it! Also had several kids show particular interest in what I was doing, including one who had her own watercolors (the youngest urban sketcher!) and another precocious little girl who could spot the details of the sketch I didn't put in with pencil (so cute!).

First sketch of the day! The only one of the cherry blossoms we were there to see. Right now most of the trees are still pre-bloom so everyone was swarming the few that are in bloom.

A less-swarmed part of the Japanese Garden

A quick pre-lunch sketch

A longer post-lunch sketch. I thought this was watercolor paper, but it turned out it was other paper that felt like watercolor paper that did NOT take paint like I wanted it to. Oops! I took some photos and I want to give this a longer study. The shadows were really complicated and had a lot of reflection points and different colors in them, definitely a challenge!

Final quick sketch to end the day; can't go to a botanic garden and not sketch a flower!