Trying to be a BIG City Urban Sketcher for a Week

I was in Brookline, Massachusetts for a week spanning Thanksgiving, spending time with family. Brookline is part of the greater Boston metropolitan area. My husband and I rented a pleasant flat in an apartment building, on a treed street.

From Beaconsfield Road Flat

Through the front windows, I did a Neocolor II wax pastel drawing of the apartment across the street. To my Midwestern sensibilities, the building was quintessentially Boston: brick facade, slate roof, copper flashing, bay windows and stone lintels. Snow remained on the roof from the flurry the day before.

Beaconsfield Road preparatory sketch

I had high hopes of doing a slew of big city urban sketching in-between family times--drawing on the trolleys and subways, sketching Boston landmarks, even fitting in the trademark Urban Sketchers coffee shop scenes. All that alluded me: I came down with the flu! After which, looking out from the inside of this cozy home away from home was all I could muster between fever, chills, and long naps.

My daughter-in-law sent over flowers.  I put them on the counter next to the kitchen window.

Drawing a minimal sketch of the utility pole from bed seemed a huge effort.

Luckily, on my first full day in Boston, before I got sick, I went to the Goya exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. What a world-class museum! What an inspired exhibit! See some of the works in the Goya exhibit and sketches I did at the museum in my Urban Sketcher International Blog post: Goya and his admirers in Boston HERE.

Old North and Old South--Boston Steeples

Perhaps the most noted steeple in American history is the Old North Church in Boston. From where on the night of April 18, 1775, a signal of 2 lanterns was shown, warning other Patriots that the British were crossing the Charles River to do battle at Lexington and Concord. It was the night of Paul Revere's famous midnight ride. I did this watercolor November 28, 201. Unseasonably warm, I sat in the pre-Revolutionary Copps Burial Ground amongst the gravestones.

Right, a view of Boston's Copley Square from Commonwealth Avenue, also painted November 2011. I'm not sure if the tower of Old South Church--nestled in the vee of darker trees, backdropped by pyramid-topped Berkeley Building and dwarfed by the John Hancock Tower--qualifies as a steeple. I took a liberty and included it in our scavenger hunt challenge.



And a bonus steeple (because February is almost over and therefore our Steeple Scavenger Hunt): Trinity Lutheran Church in Waterloo, Iowa, with its next door neighbor the Firestone Tire Store. Painted October 2010.