February 2011 - History

Saturday - Feb. 26: "509 Urban Sketchers and Painters"
The temperatures were well below freezing this morning when four of us met at Zip's. Having a bit of trouble deciding if we really wanted to brave it or not, we went inside and had some coffee to either bolster our resolve, or just decide to go back home. After downing the hot coffee we decided to be "men" about it (none of our lady friends were there), and head across the river to our pre-planned destination.

But, because it was so cold, we each drove our own vehicles so we could sit in them, with heaters running, and draw. Pat was the bravest though, opening the back of his van and sitting on the bumper with his easel and his oils in front of him.

As it turned out, we had a great time sketching and painting, just like we always do. There is literally a few tons of interesting things over there to draw: machinery, old RR cars, big-tall-cranes, and thousands of little tiny details in everything. You can find our pics at this link.

One has to admit it isn't a very feminine location, but us guys had a good time.

Saturday - Feb. 19: Figure Drawing -
Another great turn-out at the Artspace today with nine people attending the session. Wendy Sugarman Lee was our model and she did a fantastic job posing and holding her poses for the allotted times. Everyone enjoyed the time together, and we are looking forward to our next session, Feb 23, with a long pose. Bring your paints for that one!! Click on the image in the left margin, dated Feb 19, 2011, for pics of today's session.

Saturday - Feb. 12th - "509 Urban Sketchers and Painters"
Four of the newly formed "509 Urban Sketchers" had a great time today on Clover Island sketching the boat houses, the new lighthouse, one of the new buildings, and a tree or two. You can find our pictures either at the new "509 Artspace" flickr site, or click on the image in the left-hand margin under "Feb12."

Saturday - Feb. 5th - "Costume" drawing
Another excellent turn-out today for our first "costume," rather than "figure draw." Becky Poynter, Flamenco dancer, and model extraordinaire modeled for us today, and gave us a wonderful sampling of her skills! Another great session at the "509 Artspace."

Click on "slideshow" just above the pictures at this link on our new Flickr site.

January 2011 - History

Jan 22: The World-Wide SketchCrawl. Once again, we were concerned about the turn-out, and once again, we shouldn't have worried. We began with ten people and ended up with eight. Everyone had a great time, and we are all looking forward to the next one. SketchCrawls were orginated by Enrico Casarosa in San Francisco a few years ago where rather than crawling pubs with pints of beer, he decided to crawl with sketchbooks and pens. It has become a global phenomenon, usually held three times per year. You can find our pics either at our new Flickr site, here, or at the sketchcrawl.com site, here. Enjoy, and join us next time! Stay posted for details.

Jan 15th: This was our first Figure Drawing Session since Nancy returned from New York City and organized the 509 Artspace. We were a bit nervous about what kind of turn-out we would get, but we almost had a standing-room-only crowd. See the pictures for this session, here.

"Nancy in New York City Workshop"

Jan. 26th - "Figure Drawing Workshop with Nancy Thurston"

Our first Workshop was led by Nancy Thurston who recently returned from 3 months of art studies in New York City. See the pictures here.

Thanks Nancy for a great Workshop.

Our next Workshop is scheduled for February 23. A long-pose figure drawing session with model, Ashley Simonton, is scheduled.

Calling All Area Artists

For any and all Visual Artists in the Tri-City area, we would like to invite you to send a link to us for your blog site, web site, or other site addresses and, if approved (we just want to discourage anyone who might want to post something inappropriate, or off focus), we will link to them from our blog here at the "509 Artspace."

Please feel welcome to join us.

Contact us at: 509artspace@gmail.com