The last of 2016!

It's almost 2017 and this year has been quite a crazy one! Chris and I recently moved up to the Hudson Valley, so it's been a great period of adjustment getting used to the new house. With not quite as much time to draw, and no scanner hooked up until now, I decided to condense the last few months into one big finale for 2016!

This timeline also chronicles our slow descent into winter...These first drawings are from a lovely day of drawing with Audrey Hawkins back in September.

For the next couple months, each warm day felt like the last warm day we would ever have, so everyone, including me, was out trying to take advantage of the sunshine.

The city always feels so full on these warm days.

I loved this grouping of 2 mostly naked young people sunbathing next to a nun, all enjoying the park.

It still felt like summer until the sun went behind the buildings and everyone started putting their coats on over their sleeveless shirts.

A couple weeks later, as fall had begun to set in, Audrey, Chris and I had another nice day drawing out in Central Park.

The colors were beautiful, but the day not quite as luxurious as it had already started getting dark depressingly early.

Up in Croton-on-Hudson, I decided to grab a few hours on a warm day, in between renovating, to draw the new house before it got too cold. A huge and exciting project!

 In the Hudson Valley, summer was fading, but the fall leaves were just getting started.

It was so magical getting to see the leaves change and fall over the weeks, and watching how the light and colors changed.

Our friend and fellow artist Julia Sverchuk came up to visit and we went out to Fishkill Farm to enjoy a not-quite-so-warm fall day.

It was chilly, but people were still out and about, stretching their legs before the looming hibernation.

Chris and I went out for a brisk day up north drawing at Staatsburg State Historic Site, where we got married last June. The wind got a little intense on the river, so we made it a short day.

November brought the harrowing election (you can read more about my thoughts here) and less time drawing out in the cold.

And finally winter came with our first snow in the new house! The whole neighborhood looked like a Christmas card.

So now the year is almost over, and we have a strange new 2017 to anticipate. 2016 was definitely a year of change, but I am still hopeful for the new year.

Best wishes to all of you for the new year! See you in 2017!

Italy: Cinque Terre

After Florence, we traveled to Italy's western Ligurian coast to see the famed Cinque Terre villages, a series of five impossibly quaint villages dotting the rocky coastline. We stayed outside the industrial hub of the area, La Spezia, overlooking the Golfo dei Poeti (Gulf of Poets), where poets and artists (including Lord Byron!) have come for centuries to absorb the beauty. Our first night, we went to Porto Venere, an honorary "sixth village" of the Cinque Terre, at the tip of a peninsula. Less secluded than the "Cinque", but also less touristed, it was wonderful to spend time in this charming and beautiful town.

It felt more like a beach town for Italian tourists, rather than the international hotspot that the Cinque Terre have become. It was fun watching the Italian families gather, nap, chat, and relax under the shady, seaside trees.

A nearby wedding brought glamorously dressed guests, mixing with the older locals who sat and watched the sea and the visitors pass by.

We enjoyed a perfect sunset over the marina as boats bobbed in the tide and seagulls soared overhead.

The next day, it was on to Manarola, one of the Cinque Terre villages. It's not hard to see why the towns are so heavily touristed, as you see the gorgeous, brightly-colored houses tumble down impossibly steep streets into the lapping waves of a grotto at the seas edge.

Up the inclines, the town dissolves into sweeping hills of vineyards that surround the city.

The bustling town during the day is a far cry from its quaint, isolated former days as crowds of foreign tourists pour in every hour on the trains.

Although Manarola is without a true beach, dozens of sun-worshippers plop themselves out on the hot, steep pavement near the grotto to soak up the rays. Chris and I dubbed it "walrus-ing".

Both men and women donned their teeniest bathing suits to display their tanned and toned physiques. No complaints!

As the sun set, the crowds began to thin, the walruses departed, and the town began to feel small and cut off from the modern world again. I made this last drawing inside the grotto, perched on a rock as I watched a group of girls swimming and jumping from the cliffs into the water below. What a magical place!

This post is part of a series of travel illustration from a three week tour of Italy. For more of Evan Turk's travel illustration, check out the link below: 

Evan Turk Travel Illustration

Italy: The Duomo of Florence

Florence, the capital of the Tuscany region, is almost more impressive than beautiful. While other cities, like Siena or Venice, are breathtaking in their elegance, the architecture of Florence feels somewhat austere and almost macho. Its crown jewel, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore is jaw-droppingly massive. Adorned with Brunelleschi's incredible dome, it makes for a soaring spectacle.



One can easily imagine the overwhelming awe and fear that pilgrims centuries ago must have felt upon seeing a building of this grandeur. Even today, I couldn't stop exclaiming just how HUGE the cathedral feels. From certain angles, it appears more like an entire city than a single building.

Today's pilgrims help themselves to dozens of selfies, trying to fit the whole building into the frame.

  

It is an incredible feat of engineering. As you move around the building, the distances and angles are so immense that it feels like it moves along with you.

 

The locals seem to be a mix of refined, fashionable, artsy types, and faces that populated the paintings of the great Florentine Renaissance painters.

But as the sun begins to set, and the crowds of day trippers disperse, the light transforms the architecture and makes you understand the beauty that inspired the bravado of the city.

This post is part of a series of travel illustration from a three week tour of Italy. For more of Evan Turk's travel illustration, check out the link below: 

Evan Turk Travel Illustration

Italy: Rome

I just got back from a three week trip to Italy and am slowly adjusting to real life. What an amazing country with so much beauty packed into such a small place! We were surprised by how much we liked Rome, and were a little disappointed we had only booked two and a half days there. Hopefully we will be back! For an imperial city, it feels unexpectedly inviting. The Tiber River carves an elegant path crossed by grand bridges, and many of the ancient buildings are draped with jasmine that perfumes the whole city.

We sort of just wandered from place to place, admiring every street, statue, and piece of architecture, and smelling every flower. Not a bad way to spend a couple of days! We drew in the piazza near the Pantheon (above) as we were serenaded by a street performer singing opera.

Then we wandered to the Piazza Navona and admired Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi or Fountain of the Four Rivers. The allegorical figures represent the four continents and their prominent. rivers: Africa's Nile, Europe's Danube, Asia's Ganges, and the Americas' Río de la Plata. This drawing is of the Ganges on the left, holding an oar representing its navigability, and the Nile on the right, with his head draped to show that people did not know the source of the river at that time.

We also visited the Castel Sant'Angelo which was a wonderful surprise. Between its construction in 134 AD and 1900, it served as a mausoleum, fortress, Papal residence, and a prison. This mishmash of uses created a very unique structure with layers and layers of history. It also has amazing views of the Tiber River and the whole city.

No visit to Rome would be complete without a stop at the Vatican and St. Peter's. I had gone to the Vatican Museum when I was a kid, and really only remembered the Sistine Chapel. Nothing could have prepared me for the exhaustion of the rest of the museum. You are moved in hordes through beautiful room after beautiful room as they slowly lessen the air conditioning to thin the herd before arriving at the Chapel. The ceiling is incredible and well worth it, but by that point you really need a nap.

After the Vatican, we went to St. Peter's Basilica, and its impressive, expansive plaza. Inside, the cathedral is wall to wall heavy stone, mosaic, and gilt. It is beautiful, but in an oppressive, heavy-handed way. (Also, they don't let you lean or sit against anything to draw...)

Outside, in the much airier, but equally overwhelming plaza, crowds of tourists exhausted after the Vatican Museum slumped against the endless colonnade.

What a beautiful city; I can't wait to return! But this time, it was on to Tuscany...

 

This post is part of a series of travel illustration from a three week tour of Italy. For more of Evan Turk's travel illustration, check out the link below: 

Evan Turk Travel Illustration

 

New York City in Summer

Outside Grand Central Station

I always have very grand plans for the amount of time I'll be able to spend outside drawing every summer, which never quite adds up, but I have had a handful of great days to go out and draw the city!

New York Public Library

New York City summers are kind of a mixed bag. For every moment of beautiful sunshine and throngs of people out doing exciting things in beautiful places, there is a moment with the smell of hot garbage and 1000% humidity. But the city can't be beat for variety. In one city you can go from grand, imposing architecture, with hundreds of rushing people...

...to a quiet shady hillside in Central Park...

...dotted with relaxed readers, sunbathers, and couples enjoying the outdoors.

And just 25 minutes from Midtown Manhattan is my own neighborhood of Jackson Heights! The bustling neighborhood with tree lined streets and old, beautiful buildings from the 1920's and 30's is sometimes said to be the most diverse zipcode in the country. Up near the 82 St subway, sometimes called "Little Colombia," you'll find mostly South American immigrants from Colombia, Ecuador, and Argentina, among others.

While down in the 70's it is a completely different world with sari shops, Punjabi music stores, and Indian restaurants, catering to the large South Asian population with "Little India" at 74th street.

And on Roosevelt Avenue, is another completely different landscape under the elevated subway tracks. The bombardment of sound with Latin music, roaring trains, and street hawkers makes for a stark contrast with the rest of the neighborhood's quiet energy.

Hopefully I'll have many more days to go out and draw before the weather turns cold again!