Sketches!

I was fortunate enough to be part of a very unique course at Elmira. My painting professor, Marc Dennis, designed a course where he takes 7 or 8 students to NYC to live in DUMBO for a month, which is the neighborhood in Brooklyn underneath the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridge. It's an amazing trip and I cannot explain enough how valuable it was. I was even lucky enough to go on it my sophomore year as well.

This latest trip was much different than the first, however. First, we had a blog. You can read it at http://ecnycart10.blogspot.com/ . The second major difference, was what work we were responsible for. My first trip, we had to paint and sketch. We were given traveling easels and allowed a mini shopping spree for supplies and we made paintings in the loft we lived in. This time, however, he only wanted us to sketch. We had to sketch on the Subway during the first trip, but this time we had to fill 2 mini sketchbooks a week. If we finished those two, we could draw whatever we wanted. So needless to say, I have a nice collection from that trip. We wanted to make sketching posts for the blog, but we never got around to it. There were trips to various museums and attractions where we could just draw all day, so I have more drawings from there.

Sketching is incredibly important. It keeps you sharp, helps you observe better and it retains memories. However, these sketches never really see the light of day. Granted, they're not really supposed to. They aren't always incredibly private, but they are practice, full of mistakes and experiments. I thought I would post some of them anyways because some are good, some are interesting and it might be something worth looking at.

These are only from one tiny book (about wallet size). So there is plenty more, but I'm going to save them for later posts. Maybe I'll categorize them for posts or find something more interesting for them. I also sketch regularly so the collection grows all the time.


These are from the Met, the park and the loft we lived in. Some are detailed little sketches, some are quick studies. There's even one with markers, but I'll explain that more later in the week. Keep checking back during the week for more posts. There will definitely be 2 or 3 more this week. And if you're new, make sure to read the past posts from Anthony and Luke who really stepped it up the past 2 weeks.