"I find myself waiting around a lot in this city; for subways, appointments, restaurant tables. Since I started carrying a sketchbook, the sweetest words to me are, "please have a seat and we'll be with you shortly". I jump at the chance to have a few guilt-free moments to draw.
I generally stick to architecture when I'm out sketching. I love finding those long-forgotten cornices and friezes high above the streets of Manhattan. The stuff you just don't notice walking by. I love to capture run-down Brooklyn neighborhoods that are on the brink of gentrification: Coney Island, Red Hook and the Gowanus Canal. It's all going to disappear in few years and I feel a need to document it.
I'm self conscious about drawing people at close range though, especially on the subway. But I think I've perfected my technique for avoiding eye-contact: keep your head down, draw up to the shoulders, and then if they start to catch on, stick a weasel-head on them."
• Amanda's blog: craftmonkeys.
• Amanda's art on Flickr.
Posts
10 comments:
Hi Amanda, never visited New York, but hope to know something more from your excellent drawings.
Brilliant to see you on here, doll! Really looking forward to this blog.
fabulous!
that's a great drawing! i look forward to reading your posts.
Can't wait to see your sketches. I was a New Yorker in all my past lives and one very briefly in this life.
Thanks all. Happy to be here.
Ooooh, goodie! I'll look forward to it.
More than fabulous -
had a nice time with Your work.
Tschüs from Berlin
Ernst Josef
PS and for the modd:
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the Street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
Thomas Stearns Eliot
Amanda,
This is Allison, I used to work with your sister, Lydia! I was on this site, as I am an artist, and saw your drawings!
If you have a moment, I would love to get Lydia's email address to catch up with her. I met you at your house about five years ago, a wonderful Christmas party!
All the best,
Allison
allison@allisonmalinsky.com
Please join us and tell your friends about:
pleinairartists.ning.com
we are worldwide, free and growing faster than the swine flu.
Don Maier
Post a Comment