Things I love the most about New York: Chelsea

I am back in Europe now, and thinking back about my days in New York and all the things that I enjoyed the most over there. With that in mind, I decided to start this list with Chelsea.

During my three-month stay in the city, Chelsea was one of the places that I kept going back to. All the time, actually. I think I got a little addicted to it.

I found Chelsea simply amazing. It gives you access to creative work that otherwise you wouldn’t even know existed.

It’s never boring. The galleries change their collections every Thursday so every week there’s something completely new to see. From paintings and collage…

To photography…

To sculpture.

I have a constant hunger for inspiration and seeing creative work feeds it. New York is ideal in that way. It has so much going on that you simply feel an obligation to make the most of it. There is no such a thing as staying at home on a Saturday afternoon. It is not even an option. There is always somewhere to go and something to see.

Chelsea is an eternal, ongoing circle of creativity. Nothing lasts more than a week, true, so it has something shallow and superficial about it, but at the same time, it forces you almost to have a sense of duty to go and see art. Chelsea gives you a deadline and you don’t want to miss out.

 Me, the happy Chelsea addict. :0)

Lots of love.

♥♥♥

The New York weekender

Weekends in New York kind of look like this:

 All pictures taken by me.

Until next weekend, lots of love from the East Village.

♥♥♥

Children’s book illustration: The ice skating seagull

♥ Back to the studio, a.k.a. The Kitchen, a little research is crucial before I start drawing. For my Children’s Illustration course, I was asked to illustrate a section of a poem about animals. I chose the section that talks about birds and decided to draw an ice skating seagull. Yay, fun!

I don’t have a photographic memory and can’t draw animals from my head alone (unless I am completely making them up) so it always helps to look at some references. In this case, I was looking at photographs of seagulls.

And then, I start: first I pencil in a rough sketch;

And then I add the colors.

I finish it off with a couple of details.

And that’s it! Here is the final piece.

This was a sweet assignment. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Stay tuned for my next two projects: New York Portraits and a book cover for The Penderwicks.

Lots of love from the East Village.

♥♥♥