No. 46: Some Sentimental Brooklyn Drawings and a Retreat in Sicily

I'm busy packing and preparing for my third year of teaching in Sicily, which will take place again in October 2025. If you'd like to join me, all the details are in this post!

Last week, my younger son started his junior year of high school, and I walked him most of the way there on his first day. I love walking him to school, and he still lets me, when time allows.

During our walk, I snapped a few photos, knowing I’d use one as a reference to commemorate the day through drawing. There was one moment when we were crossing the street near the Brooklyn Heights Deli (I really love the look of this particular corner shop) when the light was just right, and the composition struck me, so I thought it would be a fun scene to draw in my sketch journal. It’s always in the act of drawing that my emotions really come to the surface. The time spent focusing on each detail is also when I reflect on why these moments matter so much to me.

This time, a wave of nostalgia hit me. So many first days of school have come and gone (there have been many between my two boys), and now, with this year’s walk behind us, I realized there’s only one more left. I still had to talk my son through keeping an open mind and how you can’t really judge school based on the first few days, as sometimes first impressions, specifically of a teacher, are often wrong. And how in the grand picture of life, the stress of eleventh grade is just a fleeting moment. My boys have never really loved school, so I think I’ve had the same conversations with them every first day since kindergarten.

As I think about these walks and the changing phases of my sons’ lives, I find myself feeling more sentimental about my neighborhood as well. Here are two recent pages that capture life in Brooklyn Heights: a sunset walk to dinner, looking down Henry Street, and a visit to the tailor who hems my sleeves and pant legs. It’s a job that often goes unnoticed, but it’s both high-pressure and crucial for people like me, being only five feet tall.

These pages, like the walk with my son, remind me how connected I am to the rhythms of this place—the people, the streets, and the familiar scenes that are so important in my everyday life. I’ve walked these streets and visited the dry cleaner and tailor countless times, but I find that drawing gives me the space to process, to see what is familiar in a new way. What can feel mundane in the day-to-day always becomes fresh again when I take the time to capture it on paper.

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A Retreat in Sicily

In other news, I’m off this week for my third year of teaching at Anna Tasca Lanza, a Sicilian cooking school and retreat center. I leave on today so that I have a few days to adapt to the time difference and visit some friends in Milan, and the weeklong sketchbook retreat starts on Monday.

This is my first year visiting the farm in the fall. I am excited to see the gardens with different colors and smells than in previous years, when I visited in May. As I plan and pack and set off, this is the perfect time to let you know that I will be going back again October 6–11, 2025, and there are some spots left if you are interested in joining me.

During the retreat we will work closely to help participants establish and/or develop their creative journal and sketchbook practice. We will begin with getting to know one another, learning about our backgrounds in the arts, and sharing our goals. Then we will move onto basic drawing exercises that are useful for artists at any level. Contour line drawings, blind contour, ellipses, and straight lines are some of the exercises we will practice. We will then discuss the endless ways we can capture our dreams, memories, the mundane everyday moments, and the extraordinary ones on paper, using a range of materials provided by Caran d’Ache, Blackwing, and Sakura of America. At the end of each day we will share about all we are proud of and what we wish to work on. All of this along with delicious food and the most glorious backdrop.

“Case Vecchie is a home and their guests are family. You’ll eat fresh from the farm and have a chance to see some parts of hidden Sicily.”

Cooking with retreat center host Fabrizia Lanza, talking through perspective while visiting a local cheesemaker, and a painting session under the arbor in the gardens.

The 2022 group working on a still life in the barn.

Here are a few of the comments I received after my retreats in Sicily:

Samantha is a wonderful teacher who meets people where they are artistically, teaching for all skill levels and supporting and celebrating that artist inside of all of us. I loved spending a week in Sicily with Samantha as my creative guide! I have a renewed interest in journaling and sketching to capture the beauty of my every day as well as a renewed confidence in my own style.

Samantha had kindness and affection for everyone at this workshop. She immediately knew what ideas to suggest to each individual person’s work.  She calmed this attendee's panic in about two minutes and I went on to be filled with joy with my own “unique” abilities. This makes for a natural born teacher who genuinely celebrates every individual she meets.

It is the most special week away, that is hard to convey in a few words. Even the photos can’t do justice to the beauty at Case Vecchie, but here is one more image that does a good job, and includes one of my favorite friends on the farm, little Felice, who is the first to greet the guests when we arrive:

Felice leading me into the gardens.

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Note to paid subscribers: Our next Draw Your World Meetup with the theme, Autumn in NY, will be on September 25th, and my friend

Helen C Stark

will be joining us! We will be working from reference photos taken the last time Helen was in NYC. Helen has a similar sketchbook practice to mine, but she approaches her pages in completely different ways, with a whimsical, friendly, and illustrative style. She’ll guide us through a few timed exercises, followed by some longer ones. I hope many of you can join us! The link to register is always sent in the subscriber chat, so be on the lookout for that.

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