Brooklyn Plants, Statues, Masks, and People - World Wide SketchCrawl #42

Yesterday was the 42nd World Wide SketchCrawl. The NYC Urban Sketchers met at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and the Brooklyn Museum. During the two sessions we had about 12 sketchers participate. Some came for the morning session and some for the afternoon session.

 Susan and I got to the location early, and sat in her van in the parking lot of the Brooklyn Museum to sketch this replica of the Statue of Liberty. It was created by an unknown artist and maker
c. 1900, American, Akron, Ohio.

We headed over to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and ran into Mark and Pat at the entrance. The first thing we passed was the Japanese pond, which looked great with all the snow and ice contrasted against the red pagoda....much different from when we were there in the Spring to sketch the cherry blossoms.

The gardens are home to some wonderful greenhouses where we sketched indoors. Luckily, since it was such a cold day they are all connected underground. I sketched in the bonsai room first.

Then I met a few of the other sketchers in the desert pavilion.

Some of the sketchers were in the tropical pavilion.

Here are Mark, Pat, Louis, Svetlana and Joy.

Susan was busy sketching an area right near them.

I did a quick sketch of a musa 'brazilian" from the banana family.

In addition to good food, lunchtime is always a sketching opportunity. I did a sketch of Joy while she was sketching someone else.

After lunch we headed across the parking lot to the Brooklyn Museum and went up to the Egyptian exhibits. The museum guards were great and allowed us a lot of freedom. They didn't mind sketchers sitting on the floor and let us sketch with pretty much any materials. I wasn't sure what we would be able to use since their website did say no ink or watercolors...so I brought along my watercolor pencils and my water brush and left my regular watercolors in the van.

Here is a statue of a cloaked official from the Middle Kingdom (1759 - 1675 BC).

Some of the other sketchers were working in the same area sketching the same statue. Mark found a spot on the floor and Pat stood and sketched on her iPad.

Shawne joined us for the first time. She was sketching a small Egyptian head.

Mary also joined us for the first time. Here she is sketching near Mark.

There were a few Egyptian cats on exhibit. This one was from 305BCE - 1st century CE and was made of wood. He looks very regal.

Some of us headed downstairs and found a view of the lobby that we sketched from above.

On the first floor we found a great statue to sketch. Here are Susan, Shawne, Joan (me) and Joy.

This is the statue we were sketching. She definitely made all of us feel small.

I also found a baleen whale mask from the 19th century.

My final sketch was a Ndeemba Mask for N-Khanda Initiation by an unidentified artist from the early 20th century, Bandundu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It was great meeting new sketchers and seeing our regular members. 

By the time we left the museum at around 5pm there was a fresh inch of snow on the ground which made our trip home even longer than usual.