Tag: empire state building

Washington Square people

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Washington Square NYC

Big fan of Washington Square Park. Always enjoy coming here when I’m in New York. If there’s anywhere to just sit and chill, with New York all around you, this is it. On my trip here in 2016 we stayed nearby here on Bleecker, right in the heart of Greenwich Village. On the first morning in New York City this time, I headed out a little early, planning to meet the family downtown later, and headed to Washington Square. I noticed my Pigma Graphic pen was running low on ink, which would usually mean that oh well, nothing I can do about that. But I’m in a big city, of course I can find a replacement pen in one of the first shops I come across. This is New York, you don’t have to look too hard. New pen in hand I went to the park with the big arch to sit and draw the people. Well I drew the Washington Square Arch first, above, looking up towards the start of Fifth Avenue. It’s not Marble Arch, but what a world-beating location. Greenwich Village is where NYU (New York University) is located so there are a lot of students around. I would have liked to have gone here. I remember looking around here on our trip in 2002 when I was thinking about doing a Masters degree, but I saw how much it would cost, and ended up staying in London to do a Masters at King’s, and then moving to California in 2005. All worked out. It was funny listening to people talk, I wrote some of it into the sketch, some students who I think were visiting NYU or maybe just new here, talking about their experiences. “I don’t want to sound dramatic,” one young woman said dramatically, “but the three hour time difference has literally ruined my life.” Most overheard conversations are generally boring as hell but this one made me laugh. In fact I overheard a lot of amusing conversations in New York, it’s almost as if being in a big city is more interesting in general than, you know, Davis. I overheard two guys while walking around in Chelsea who spoke in the most thick and colourful New York accent, completely opposite to the regular vanilla-flavoured California voice (which I like, don’t get me wrong, but we are kings and queens of the generic). These guys would have needed subtitles on American TV. One had a scratchy throaty voice and the other was pure cartoon Noo-Yoik, discussing some TV show or movie they had seen, it was the highlight of my year.

Washington Sq Pk people NYC

What is it about New York that makes me want to draw more people than in other cities? Big city people are different, they dress different, they move and stop different, they talk about different things, and they sound different. I don’t know, I like the diversity. I notice it in London, and in a place like New York my urban sketcher radar is on overdrive. I drew people in Washington Square with the thicker black pen that allows me to just go quickly. Here are a bunch.

Washington Sq Pk people NYC  Washington Sq Pk people NYC  Washtn Sq Pk people E sm

I liked the guy sitting with a tall wizard hat, I think he was reading tarot cards or telling fortunes or something.  Washtn Sq Pk people F sm

I was walking this area with my teenager after a morning at the Guitar Center (a morning well spent) when we sat in Washington Square for a bit and I drew this group of young women sat near to us, chatting animatedly. The big bushy jacket of the one on the left was interesting.   Washtn Sq Pk people D sm

new york evening, chelsea mornings

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Madison Sq Park view NYC

New York is not my favourite city. My favourite city is London, but New York is a very close second. Sometimes when London isn’t listening I tell New York that it’s my favourite, but when London walks back into the room I grin suspiciously and go on about how the Underground is better than the Subway and curving streets are so much nicer than straight ones, but it’s hard for a proper city person like me to hide it, New York is just great. It literally does feel like you’ve stepped onto all those TV shows, those movies, those great records, and certainly all those Spider-Man video games I like so much. It’s an urban sketchers paradise. Arriving by train through New Jersey I was filled with excitement at a glimpse of the skyscrapers. There seem to be more of them than last time; my most recent visit was in early 2016, which in historical terms was a long long time ago now, a special birthday trip with two of my oldest friends. Obama was still president. Leicester were going for the league, with Spurs and Arsenal chasing. My visit before that was in late 2008, with my wife and baby son,  just before Obama won his first election, just before Lewis Hamilton won his first championship, and Spurs had just recently won the league cup, which would surely be the first of many trophies to come. And my visit before that was in another age still, at the end of 2002, the middle of the first George W. Bush term, still in the recent post-9/11 world, my first trip to New York, a city I’d wanted to visit my whole life. It was exactly as I imagined and it remains so, but my gaps between visits keep getting inexplicably longer. We got to our hotel on the corner of 6th and 28th, in the Chelsea neighbourhood, staying on the 28th floor with an incredible view down towards the World Trade Center, looking up at the Empire State Building and over to the Chrysler. Not gonna lie, that view was pretty world-beating. I could not wait to get back down to ground level though, and explore the streets, so I went for a walk towards Madison Square Park. The traffic, the people, the sounds and the smells, I love being back in an urban environment. The Flatiron Building was all covered over, but I sat in the park with a milkshake and sketched up towards Midtown, as that Empire State dominated proceedings. I walked about the neighbourhoods a bit before heading back up to the hotel, where we got a massive proper New York pizza and watched The Avengers. 

Superior Flowers 6th Ave 032625 sm

I have a lot of New York sketches and will try to present them thematically or geographically, but for this post here are some sketches from the area of our hotel. There were lots of florists everywhere, this may well be called the Florist District. It isn’t though. I looked up the Manhattan neighborhoods on Wikipedia, and while this is very much within Chelsea, it was historically called the Tenderloin, the area between 5th and 7th, 24th and 42nd. I don’t know if people still call it that. There were a lot of flower shops though, and hotels. I drew the one above while on my morning sortie. 

Chelsea Hotel NYC

I always like a morning stroll when I visit a new place, before the family get up. Chelsea is a good area to explore. One morning I was walking down 23rd Street, the sun was casting Spring light down the long streets making everything look like an album cover, when I spotted a place so steeped in musical history it knocked me off my feet to see it. The Hotel Chelsea on 23rd Street has so many pop-culture names associated with it that it could be a six season Netflix series all of its own and still have secrets to share. Writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers. Maybe urban sketchers, though I have never stayed there. Bob Dylan stayed there, and Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, Madonna, Edith Piaf, Alice Cooper, Bob Marley, Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen, Jim Morisson, you name it. This is where Sid Vicious stayed with Nancy and where she died, allegedly killed by Sid. Rod, Jane and Freddy probably lived there for a bit, for all I know. Writers like Kerouac, Burroughs, Miller, Twain, Ginsberg, Quentin Crisp. Dylan Thomas lived and died here in 1953, so did Brendan Behan a decade later. Sarah Bernhardt slept in a coffin while she lived here. Stanley Kubrick, Al Pacino, Eddie Izzard, Bette Midler, they all stayed here and I’d like to have been in the hotel bar that night. Ironically I don’t think Jose Mourinho or John Terry have ever stayed here. I stood across the street with that Joni Mitchell song in my head, while the traffic wrote the words. I had to check on my phone this was definitely the right place, it would have been embarrassing to have sketched it with all this cultural history going through my head only for it to be the wrong place. I bought some cannoli from a place down the street and went back to the hotel. Check back for more New York explorations…

right through the very heart of it

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the empire strikes back

The final bit of urban sketching done in New York (I also took a lot of photos for reference drawing later, but you can’t beat being there on the streets tasting the air). Here I am just off Washington Square, looking up Fifth, indeniably NYC in November. I never went up the Empire State. Always thought it would be better to gostart spreading the news up the Rockefeller anyway, because at least from there you can see the Empire State – I love seeing that building. I also adore the Chrysler – it’s one of those buildings that when you first see, you cannot stop taking photos of it. It could be the most beautiful modern building in the world (and I say modern meaning in the past 100 years). I sketched it from the steps of the New York Public Library, itself a fantastic old building (but not one with baby changing facilities, I might add).

One of the things I love about New York is that you always feel a little like you’re on the set of Ghostbusters. Things are so familiar. And not just Ghostbusters, but any of the million or so other movies or shows that have been set here. Not a feeling you get strolling down Edgware High Street.

I still hadn’t eaten, which is not a good thing (and surely an impossibility in the big apple), and as I previously mentioned, I wanted something ‘New York’. But then I happened across a little Belgian place, the BXL Cafe in narrow 43rd Street, which called me in to taste some Maredsous beer and some absolutely amazing moules frites (better than I have had even in bxl cafeBelgium, I might add). I drew the place (right) in copic and faber-castell brush pens; trying something different for a change. Overheard some Scottish women talking about shopping for their kids, sounded like they had saved up a long while for this trip, and I felt sorry for them because the pound has absolutely plummeted this past couple of months. I overheard a lot of British people in New York – more than I did New Yorkers – the place is choc full of them. Probably why I felt at home.

Came back down again the next day, with my wife and baby, to go to Central Park and see the amazing fall colours. We ended up getting a little lost on the Subway, which is enormous fun with a stroller by the way, and sitting in a cafe off Sixth trying to feed the baby (while overhearing, of course, English people). And I finally had cannoli, something definitely New York, and it was good. New York is good. Can’t wait to go back.