Draw Now! at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

The SITU Studio - Draw Now! event was definitely not a typical Urban Sketching afternoon.  First, it was at the Brooklyn Navy Yard which is a world unto itself.   I thought there was a tremendous amount to explore at the Navy Yard and I’d love to go back.  

An interesting place to draw and explore

There was no obvious organization at the event, no one seemed to be in charge and there were no instructions that I heard regarding what to do.  When I arrived there must have been over a hundred people there.  At least a dozen were urban sketchers.  It was a very interesting group. Everyone who attended was passionate about art and it was easy to strike up conversations.

We began sketching on the large sheets

Essentially what we were doing was drawing on huge sheets of material.  As we drew there were faint projections on the surface that you could use or ignore. Everyone did their own thing.  Because we all used the same art materials there seemed to be a unity to what we were doing.  

It was easy to get create lots of detail

The sheets were periodically taken and fed into a huge computer run jig saw that scored and notched our drawings so they could be folded and fitted into various shapes.  As the afternoon progressed and we finished more and more of the sheets a weirdly shaped  sculpture began to form.

The industrial jig-saw 

Assembling the pieces

A view of one tiny section of the assembled sculpture

Although I was interested in the process I was more interested in the intensity of the people working on their sheets.  I did several drawings of the people sketching.

Working on the sheets

It was a different and interesting day.  I appreciated that Mary Lynch proposed the idea of us going as group.  

Thanks for the suggestion Mary.