I just got back last night from a two-day trip to New York. One day was taken up with the Society of Animal Artists board meeting (of which, more later) and the second day with wandering around Greenwich Village sketching and then hitting some jazz clubs in the evening with fellow artist Guy Combes, who lives across the river in New Jersey as the artist-in-residence at the Hiram Blauvelt Museum of Art.

I hadn’t done any “urban” sketching for quite a long time, but the area of New York that I was in could keep an artist busy for a lifetime. As it was I did the four following sketches in a  5.5×8.5″ Strathmore Series 400 recycled paper sketchbook with a Pentel “Energel” .5 pen.

Nothing fancy here. These are about the process and just having fun.

Notice that I didn’t get into rendering a bunch of leaves on the big shrub. It’s just a shape.

All the little dark marks are what is left of old pier pilings.

I stood on the opposite corner to draw this festive restaurant exterior with the piggy sign.

None of these took more than about twenty minutes.