Monday, April 22, 2013

Quick weekend in NYC

My wife wanted to go see a musical with her friend so we drove in later Friday night and drove back Sunday morning - a real quick trip. It's been a good 6 months since we last visited New York City so it was nice to visit.

Saturday was a bid windy but sunny and my urge to want to sketch was much stronger than going to see the musical - so I hung around the 42 st/ time square area for a few hours. The first 2 sketches were from Bryant Park - a small but beautiful park right behind the public library.

Warm up sketches of the NYPD car, 3 recycling bins and a statue.
130420_bryantpark1



2nd sketch is looking at the back of the public library facing the east side. They had a really nice comfortable rocking chair perfect for sketching. While sketching, I had a small conversation with a man cleaning the park that came over and complimented my sketch. He also mentioned that I should go draw Times Square and if I could do that, I would then be really good!
130420_bryantpark2



I took up the challenge and walked over to times square :)
130420_timessquare

It felt funny walking around times square looking for a subject to sketch. There's just so much going on in this place that it's just an overload of information. I just picked a spot and started to sketch the buildings looking North of Broadway and 7th Ave. In the beginning, it was pretty boring and uninspiring. After a while I noticed 'Naked Cowboy' walking around - a muscular guy in underwear, cowboy boots playing a guitar. He was quite popular with girls/ woman of all ages having pictures taken with him. Then I noticed there were more Naked Cowboys and a few Naked Cowgirls too - the guy had started a franchise! Clever.
There were tons of other people in various costumes too - Elmo, Mickey, Minnie, Buzz Light year, Dora, Spider Man, Iron Man etc... you name it, they were here. Being in times square for an hour was more than enough for me - I was exhausted.

That night we went back to my fathers place in New Jersey and went to an all you can eat Korean BBQ place. Since he lives in a town with one of the highest Korean populations in the US, the quality of Korean food in restaurants is absolutely amazing. This place had an amazing Kalbi BBQ and was hard to believe that it was all you can eat for a fixed price.
130420_bbq

I personally like the Kalbi shown in #2 where they would cut it off of the bone as a long meat rather than the #1 where there are smaller pieces of the bone left inide. Once cooked, the server would come over at a perfect timing to cut the meat in perfect sizes using a scissor.

We were stuffed. It was a fun trip!