Plein Air Painting and Formation of Batuque Art Group

My artist friends David and Ariel agreed to do plein air painting together from time to time as we did last summer. As planned, we met this morning at Kew Gardens Railway Station. For today, a new artist named Esabelle joined us in the activity. David mentioned that we needed a name for our group. Ariel suggested using the name of Batuque for our group. Ariel is from Brazil and batuque is a term for a Brazilian song and dance genre which originated in Africa. At first I felt it sounded pretty exotic, but after learning a little more about it, I thought with its strong quick tempo and folksy flavor it sort of resembled the way we handled our activities. Therefore, we all agreed on the name.

We didn't go far but just painted around the railway station. I made one of the the platform.

  Kew Gardens Railway Station

After lunch, we went to Caffe Bene together. The cafe had a deck on the sidewalk. There was a bus stop right down there. Since the bus led to JFK Airport, there were a lot of passengers waiting there. The three of us sat on the deck and drew the endless line of passengers the whole afternoon till it was past 5 PM.