We’ve been back from our vacation at Leetes Island in Guilford, CT. less than two weeks.
It’s nice to do this post as our lovely seaside days are starting to fade and the energy and spirit of New York are taking over.
Leetes Island, Guilford CT
Our cozy cabin
Each year at the start of September we rent the same cozy cottage on the water.
The Island stays the same from year to year
Nothing much changes on the island from year to year. It is so completely different from New York City. A perfect place to unwind, and that is what we did.
Dennis worked on a difficult 1000 piece jig saw puzzle and read his history books. I googled a lot of course and kept a cartoon journal of daily events. Have I mentioned that I had been cartooning just for the fun of it for the last 10 years? It’s a cartoon journal of day to day events both real and imagined. The characters are, of course, fictitious, ahem.
One of these posts you’ll see the cartoons appearing.
Next week I’m going to the Comic Con convention in New york City and plan to meet up with my friends Shirley Susilo, Karen Chin and Christine Liu. They all worked in my studio as interns from Parsons School of Design and we have remained friends since. Shirley returned home to Jakarta, Indonesia and has become a well know cartoonist. Karen and Christine have staff jobs as art directors here in the city.
Our evening entertainment
Dennis and I walked, listened to the Yankee games and ate a lot of great seafood. Friends and family came to visit, play scrabble and eat pizza in our vacation spot on the water.
We were lucky to see some of the most spectacular sunsets we’ve ever seen on the Island.
All the fresh fruit and vegies we could eat
And we ate lots of fresh fruit and berries from our local farm market, Bishops.
Margaret Egret
In the mornings and the evenings we watched the Egrets, the great blue heron, the cormorants and numerous other shore birds as they waded and hunted and caught their dinner – perhaps a small silvery fish or a tiny crab. One egret always appears alone. We named her Margaret and look for her every year. I think that the bird watching and other wildlife adventures are our most favorite parts of being there. Today I have been painting an egret for a new series of coastal painting collages that Dennis and I are working on. I’ll let you take a look in the next post.
Note: Manufacturers like to see the designs in groupings of two or four or more. This helps make them more saleable and consumers like to buy groupings. We’re doing four designs in this series.
- Stormy Day on Leetes Island
The swimming is great there: salt water (the Long Island Sound) but no waves – not until the storm hit, that is, and the waves were splashing so high they reached our deck.
One of the five Island Hens
This year we had five lovely fat fluffy hens on the Island.
Theresa’s chicken spa
I bought a new watercolor journal and some really nice pointy sumi e chinese brushes but never got around to using them. I think that painting still felt a little too much like work. But now I am using my chinese brushes to work on my shore paintings. It takes a while to get used to them and the special way of holding them. I am learning to have a lot more respect for my watercolor brushes. They are very individual and specialized.
The end of the summer flowers
We said goodbye to the last of the summer flowers
First signs of fall
and we saw the beginnings of fall not only in the air, but at the farmers market.
The fabulous Chrysler Building, NYC
New York was waiting for us when we came back.
My next post will be the first in the series of Everything You Need to Know about Trade Shows. Stay tuned and hope you all had a great summer.
Andrea Brooks Studio 