Donough O’Malley’s NY Sketchbook

These sketches of the big apple were from a recent trip I made there, a surprise birthday present (very nice indeed). Some of my family who live in South America were visiting so I got dragged over on a plane at the last minute.

A lot of my previous artwork contained cityscapes which I love, so what better place to go than the big N.Y.
Also for a current personal project I’m working on I need some really good reference of the city, so along with a few quick doodles I amassed a ridiculous amount of photos.
Mostly of really boring mundane stuff like fire hydrants and taxis. Anyone flicking through my digital camera will think I am an odd chap indeed.

It’s the difference in the normal aspects that I like, that’s why I was interested in these road signs on the corner of Madison Ave. and E60 street.
Just very different from Ireland and, well, cooler.

When doing sketches I find it too easy to get sucked into trying to get every detail, which just doesn’t work sometimes. I thought it best to just try and keep the rough shapes and outlines of the cityscape here.

When walking cross the Brooklyn bridge, it was rammed with tourists, to the annoyance of New Yorkers trying to cycle past. Also there were a lot of art students doing incredible detailed drawings of the bridge. So being embarrassed and lazy I decided to concentrate on the negative space of the sky which after all makes the outline what it is.
That’s my story anyway and I’m sticking with it.

This was done in the Metropolitan Museum which is an incredible place. You could easily spend your entire trip there. But there was a lot of bars to visit also, so I didn’t.


The mundane again. Don’t you just love these traffic lights? Probably not if you’re stuck in traffic but after an overload of drawing buildings my eye was drawn to something smaller with some detail I could fit in, in a small amount of time.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 7:55 am and is filed under Illustration, Sketchbooks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.