miss liberty

when i wrote about my internship with brett, i neglected to say that i can see the statue of liberty on the way to and from brooklyn. the first time i saw it out his window was a real shocker--i remember just glancing out the window one day, and it was just...there!

view out the window (to the left of the pirate picture in the previous blog post)

for some reason, it resonated with me as some sort of piece (and peace) of home. or something. it was sort of shocking and comforting, somehow, to see that well-known monument i've known about since kindergarten, just chillin' there outside the window. [in real life you can see it much more clearly than in this photo! promise.] it has become my little ritual to look for it on the train to brooklyn, and my eyes automatically notice it while at brett's studio. i don't mind.

...

today [sat. june 26] i went with my roommates natasha and jodi, along with our friend jonathan, to visit miss liberty herself, along with ellis island. we didn't get tickets in time to actually go inside the statue, but it was okay; i felt it was worth my time--i spent really good quality time on both islands.

the four of us headed to battery park to catch the ferry. i loved being on a boat. all i could think about the whole time i was on the boat today (i believe that was 3 times) was this. natasha and i quoted thoroughly through much of our boat time. :]

fabulous roommate natasha on the boat headed to the island

the excitement grew as we neared the statue, and i realized she looked a lot smaller than i thought. it's interesting because usually things that look so small from a distance look bigger up close and personal, but it wasn't the case here. which i thought was kinda cool, because she can be a beacon to those far away but still small enough to be personable. at least, that's what my mind [which incidentally tends to characterize many inanimate objects, including shoes and chocolate milk] tells me and i'd like to believe it, thank you very much.

when we got to the island, here's what we saw:

roommate love!

and pretty skylines (with pretty roommates)!

i just kept looking at the statue. from the side, she has some very pleasant rhythms to her stance:

and i really started to just love her aesthetics, something i hadn't paid as much attention to when i'd see her in photos or from a distance. little things like her body type, how well drapery was designed, the actual design of the drapery, the weight of the stance, etc.


so, i decided to figure-draw the Lady. i started with a sketch, then inked part in. i looked kinda funny...but i wanted to get the angle right. so, here's what i looked like, and here's what the sketch looked like:

oh, that's jonathan on the right. and the statue on the far right...if you couldn't tell....

 and then got brave and tried some color. i'll post that later. too lazy to fish for the camera card now.

we walked around and found some statues. they were all sorts of wonderful. they depicted various historical figures (Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, Édouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye, Emma Lazarus and Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, to be exact. More about these in a later post. Hopefully.) along with plaques explaining their significance.

i don't even know how anyone could tell me and mr. hearst apart.

all in all, glad i got the opportunity. i still look at the statue when i travel to brooklyn, but now my thoughts are directed differently.

stay tuned for part II: ellis island.