Virgin Islands Sketchbook

A couple of weeks ago, me and the family went on vacation to the St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. I figured I wouldn't have much if any solo time for the long-term, labor intensive sketches I usually do, and I've been wanting to try something new anyway. So I bought a small, inexpensive sketchbook and a small watercolor kit. The book was 3.5x5.5 inches (8.9x14 cm), much smaller than my usual 9x12 sketchbook, and the color was all watercolor. All drawn so much faster and looser than I ever do. It's how most urban sketchers work, but it's pretty alien to me. I need a lot more practice and technique, but I liked how some of them came out.

Creque Alley is one of a series of narrow passageways near the shoreline in Charlotte Amalie, the main town of St Thomas. These warehouses once were notorious for housing pirates' loot; now they house restaurants and lots and lots of jewelry stores. It was also the namesake of a song by the Mamas and the Papas, (they added an 'e' in the title of  'Creeque Alley'). Supposedly they wrote the song while crashing with hippies in this alley, though the song doesn't mention the Virgin Islands at all.

The view from our hotel overlooked the bay where the cruise ships docked.

Magen's Beach is probably the most famous of the St. Thomas beaches, so it was the first one we hit. It was great, but actually not our favorite of the trip.

The observatory at Coral World Ocean Park. When you go downstairs, you're under the water and can view all the sealife swimming around.

It immediately reminded me of the Hall of Doom from the old Super-Friends cartoon.

We spent one day on neighboring St. John's Island and made a stop at the Annaberg Plantation, The remnants of this slave plantation are now part of the Virgin Islands National Park. This structure is the ruins of the windmill, standing 38 feet (11.5 m) high.

There is another, similar plantation windmill ruin that stands at the top of the Peace Hill trail.

This is not my favorite painting of the week, but it was my favorite beach, Secret Harbor.

2020-2021

Recently finished filling this sketchbook. The first drawing was done just days before New York City was locked down because of the Coronavirus Pandemic, and the last was done as it was starting to abate. During that year, there as the uprising over the murder of George Floyd - that's what that one drawing of Frederick Douglas you can glimpse pertains to - and that officer was found guilty a few days after I completed the book. There's also all my "Save Our Stages" drawings in there that were featured on USK Talks. Man, that was a hell of a year.

McKenna Park

A still-bare tree at Captain John McKenna, IV Park. It's a small park in Windsor Terrace named after a local soldier who died in the war in Iraq. I like taking my kids there because it's so small and hardly anyone is ever there, except this cranky old woman who's always yelling at other people for being there. She seems to be angry that people aren't social distancing enough, even though it's only a very few people nowhere near each other or her. I suspect she's just never liked people being in "her" park, even before the pandemic.

One Week 100 People

Last week, I participated in the One Week 100 People challenge. It's a challenge created by urban sketchers Liz Steel and Marc Taro Holmes, and it's exactly what it sounds like. To set a goal of drawing 100 people over a period of five days. People did it however they wanted, in whatever medium they wanted, some working off photographs or television. I decided they would all be done from life, using the same pen (a Sharpie fine marker) in a 5.5 X 8.5 Canson sketchbook I had around.

I wound up with a total of 103. They are all very fast sketches, a few minutes at most, mostly done on the subway or around the museum. The challenge occurred the week before Coronavirus shut down the city. I wonder how many of this 103 will make it through the coming weeks unscathed.

Inktober Week 3

Week 3. I missed a day in there.

Inktober 2019 Week 2

Week 2

Strange & Unusual Aquatic Beasts And Other Ancient Secrets And Mysteries Of The Deep

Last Christmas, my wife got me a sketchbook from Brooklyn Art Library as part of The Sketchbook Project. The Art Library is in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and they'll send you a blank sketchbook that you fill as you please, return, and is incorporated into their collection.

It took me awhile to think of what I wanted to do with it. I knew I wanted to do something different than my usual urban sketching. Eventually, I decided to do something related to mythology. Something made me think of depictions of sea serpents on Old World maps, and that expanded to various water-based mythological and folkloric creatures from various cultures. The result was Strange & Unusual Aquatic Beasts And Other Ancient Secrets And Mysteries Of The Deep.

Here's part of it. You can see the entire sketchbook here. If you're in Williamsburg, you can see the actual book at their library, and I just heard that it's part of the collection that's going on tour to Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.