NYBG Warmup

Today's beautiful and nice, warm weather plus the Wednesdays free admission at the New York Botanical Garden was just the right combination to get me going on a dry run for this Saturday's NYC USK outing.  I was ready to sketch with my portable sketch easel!

This weekend's outing would also coincide with the 3rd Annual NYBG Plein Air Invitational.  As you know, there will be well known Plein Air artists doing their work all over the garden.  In fact, one of our own, Elisa Gore, will be participating at this event, like she did last year.

Today, I did two sketches.  The first one was a panoramic sketch of the conservatory and the second one was a close up looking to the left of the conservatory.  For the first one, I sat on a bench with the portable sketch easel in front of me.  

There were several curious onlookers.  Some asked if they can look at my work after seeing me use the pencil sighting measurement technique; a lady struck up a conversation saying how her dad was an artist and that was how food was provided for them; a gentleman asked what I do with the finished artwork and suggested maybe I should sell them like he saw people do at Washington Square.  And of course, as I was to ready to put away all things, a group of Chinese tourists (I guess) were curious to see what I made.  It was such a fun day!  Here are the photos.