Oculus & Titanosaurs in NYC

[By Mike Daikubara in New York City] Attending a Brand Strategy conference in NYC last week, I was also able to slip in some time to see 2 things I really wanted to see in the city: Oculus and Titanosaurs.
Oculus is the new train station build in the ground Zero which had partially opened its door to the public and was just stunning. It seemed to have been a much debated structure requiring lots of time and money to build but I was purely impressed by this elegant structure surrounded by really large buildings near by.

 

Inside:

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Many of you might already know this but during this trip I learned that you could partially take a panoramic photo on the iphone - meaning you don't have to do a full 180 degrees and can stop it at any time. Addicted to this new technique, I ended up taking a few sketch selfies looking up.

Here's a breakfast scene sitting inside the court area at my hotel. Really cold but had to get this wall display in the hotel:

Times square area. Another cold day - it would be perfect day to be inside a fuzzy costume:

 

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On my last day in the city I headed to the Museum of Natural history to see the worlds largest dinosaur - it's so large and so new that they don't have a real name for it yet but called it the Titanosaurs for the group it fit under.

This was a really challenging sketch to do with tons of people, a dark setting, and no where to stand to get a full view of this dinosaur.  This is the view I had. I had to swing my head 180 to get the entire head to capture this creature!

Using the Panoramic photo setting, I was finally able to get the entire dinosaur. Looking around many people were doing the same thing!

 

It's 122 feet (37M) long! So long it couldn't fit into the room!

 

 

I had fun capturing 2 more dinosaurs before catching my train ride back home to Boston.

Relaxing weekend Trip to New York City

It's been while since I last visit NY but last weekend my wife and I spent the weekend there since it was our 10th wedding anniversary.  We decided to see a Broadway show, get some good food and experience the city vibe.I have to mention in advance that I didn't sketch much during this trip but had fun capturing these 4.

A train ride from Boston to NYC is a nice convenient way of getting right into the smack middle of Manhattan - it's just a tad expensive. We usually drive down to the city but this time we took the train since it's relaxing.




Lunch time in the city - We went to my favorite steak restaurant in NYC.
It's called Tad's and this casual steak house hasn't changed a bit since when I first ate here in the 70's. It almost felt like all the furniture and decorations were still the same. It's also probably the best cheapest steak you can get in the city!




This police scooter sketch was done while my wife did some shopping.



And of course, my mandatory hotel room sketch.
This hotel was quite unusual and fun to sketch too.
I thought the electric bed was quite clever in making full use of the tiny tiny Manhattan hotel room. It comes upright to be able to easily enter/exit the room and rolls down fully flat taking up the full width of the room when going to sleep.

 

In the hotel lobby they also had a machine called the 'yobot' which automatically checks in/holds onto your luggage! clever
All the slots were full so we didn't get a chance to use it though, bummer...

 

Visiting the Statue of Liberty from New Jersey

Did you know that you could take a ferry to the Statue of Liberty island from New Jersey?
I didn't know this until visiting my father last weekend.

This 1st sketch was done from my fathers apartment balcony looking across the Hudson river to the upper west side of Manhattan. The storm had just cleared and the blue sky was just starting to appear. 

The next day we headed to go see the Statue of liberty since we found out there was a ferry from the New Jersey side going to the Liberty islands. This made it much more convenient than having to go into Manhattan with lots of traffic and people. The last time I remember going to the Liberty island was for a school trip over 35 years ago! - so this was quite exciting to be able to see it again and it was also my wife's first time to the islands too.

Going through security, we hopped on the ferry that consisted of 2 stops. The first stop was Ellis Island - a gateway for millions of immigrants that came into the United States and was considered to be the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. 
The building shown is now the museum of immigration. The displays inside looked amazing but unfortunately could not see any of it due to the limited time we had. We however ended up on the island for an hour waiting on line for the ferry to go to the Statue of Liberty Island. Standing in line under scorching sun and in between large amounts of people was unpleasant but I was able to keep my self entertained working on the sketch shown below.

Once on the Liberty Island we needed to go through another security checkpoint to go up to the observation deck area and not even a small bag was allowed through. These are the times when I feel good that all of my sketching equipment fits inside my cargo shorts pockets including my newly purchased mini folding stool a size of a small water bottle!
The problem with sketching anything this iconic such as the Statue of Liberty is the difficulty in finding a fun view that I haven't already seen before. I finally settled on this view, sitting quite close to the statue base and also fitting in the Manhattan skyscrapers on the right hand side. The tall blue building is One World Trade center, also used to be called the Freedom Tower.
It was a tough view and I wish I had time to do another one but we needed to head back home.

 

Well, once again we were in line a long time for the Ferry back to NJ.  I at least was able to once again sketch while standing in a tight queue keeping myself entertained. I personally love how the back view of the Statue of Liberty came out!
It was a gorgeous 4th of July weekend and we headed back home to Boston.

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.




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!




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


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.


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!