The Amore Breakfast

We drove four and a half hours heading north to Maine last weekend and spent Saturday evening at the beautiful city of Ogunquit, ME.  The following morning, we were ready to dine at the famous Amore Breakfast restaurant.  From the outside, you can't tell what it has to offer but once you step inside, you're immediately thrown back to a happy setting where the decorations evoked the vintage 1950's era.  They have quite a collection of period signs and posters, too.  It's a classic!

It didn't take long before we got seated at a corner area of the room where I had a nice view looking toward the front entrance.  Once we placed our order, I sketched this scene before me.  That was a good Sunday morning!

A commuter and the Flat Iron Building

Another double spread sketch done on September 17, 2019.  He sat diagonally across from my seat so I was able to sketch him.  The Flat Iron Building was done after work but since I biked that day, it took not much time to do this sketch and head back to Grand Central for my train ride home.

Nathan's Famous Hot Dog

Before leaving Coney Island on the day I visited, I made sure I stopped by the famous Nathan's Hotdog building at the corner of Stillwell Avenue and Surf Avenue.  My first time experience coming to this place was when I did Dr. Jeffrey Levine's Subway Sketching workshop a year ago.  How could I not come back to this famous hotdog place?  The waxed pencil sketch was meant to be colored but I'm not finding time to color it.   Maybe it will happen one day in the near future.

The Stillwell Avenue Train Station

Last month, on a Labor Day holiday weekend, I went to see the Coney Island Beach front and boardwalk.  Sketched a couple of spots and then tried to capture this view of the Stillwell Avenue station where I arrived at and took off from having a fun day at the famous ocean front place.

The opposite page shows a man on the same Metro North train I took going home.  He was trying to catch a nap on the ride home until he detrained at Mamaroneck, NY. 

The water towers

The view from the 19th floor room of the hotel where my relatives stayed two weekends ago was just amazing.  Looking north of Cedar Street, the shorter building next to us offered a nice view of the rooftop patio and water towers.  Too bad, I didn't have enough time to sketch more of the scene.

#62 Pearl Street, NYC

Parking in NYC is still difficult even on a Sunday especially the downtown area where I wanted to park at a nearby church neighborhood.  Alas, I found one spot but it was quite a distance from the church where I dropped off my visiting relatives from TN to attend a Sunday Mass.  I wouldn't mind waiting as long as I have a sketchbook at hand.  This was the scene where I parked my car.

The original line work was fine but I wanted to practice adding colors to my sketches.  Here are the two versions.

Coney Island Beach: Part II

This was actually the first sketch I did while on the Coney Island Beach boardwalk but it sat for several days at home until I added some greyscale lines using Tombow markers.  Then this evening I wanted to add some blue color to the sky.  I pictured in my mind the easier way to get a wet-on-wet effect is to water spray mist the part and splash the color.   Well, to my nightmare, the second the mist interacted with the grey lines, the bleeding oozed everywhere!   It was surreal to watch it but there was no turning back.  I tried to brush it off but no use.  In the end, I came to accept the happy accident.  It wasn't what I had in mind but hey.....

The eerie after-effects of desiring that blue sky color.

The before look when I was ok not having a blue sky color.