Here are just a few recent life drawings done on the MTA, the NYC subway. I take the D, N and R lines to and from Brooklyn and Manhattan; most of the sketching is done at night on the train from Rockefeller Center in Manhattan to Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I have a smallish sketchbook right now, about 8″ x 5.5″. The challenge is to draw the subjects quickly and hope they don’t catch your eye. That kills it.
I grew up 70 miles from NYC, in the rural town of Ridgefield, Connecticut. I started visiting Manhattan from the age of 2 or 3, driving down the Saw Mill Parkway with my parents as my father delivered art to the publishing houses who hired him to do book cover illustrations. One of the main clients was Pocketbooks, a division of Simon & Schuster, whose offices are on 6th Ave, right across the street from the subway station I use now every day.
The music that speaks New York to me is particular and special to my history of NY as visitor then a 25-year resident. The attached song by the Brothers Johnson will forever conjure up trips to New York in 1978 that invariably ended up with bar-crawling, party-crashing and public debauchery.
OK I love ya Mister Eyeballman buh bye!
Tom Bennett
darteboard
galinatodorova
Jason Gray
jdhastings
laelia e. mitchell
probrucer
ssstephg
Toni Tiller
