New Year’s Day was a rare opportunity to participate in the opening of a new subway station.  The Q line now starts at 96th Street and stops at 86th Street and 72nd – all new stations – before heading toward Coney Island.  After years of construction on Second Avenue the street is now clean and the new stations opened at Noon on January 1st.  I was there with my wife and my sketchbook. Below is the moment the gates were pulled away and the crowd streamed onto the new escalators.

Here is the line on 86th Street as the station was opened.

Everybody was snapping pictures of the gleaming new escalators.

This is my first sketch, with my trusty Pilot fountain pen and Carbon ink on a Stillman & Byrne Sketchbook.

I switched to pencil for this sketch below.

For variety I used my fountain pen and aqua-brushes loaded with different dilutions of Carbon ink.

These ladies were having a great time enjoying the festive atmosphere in the new station.

For the sketch below I used a plain pencil plus soluble graphite with aqua-brush to get the tone.

To sketch this little boy I used a different Pilot fountain pen loaded with Noodlers #41 Brown Ink.

Here are a variety of passengers on the inaugural ride as we left 86th Street, using my Pilot fountain pen.

Probably the most breathtaking thing about the new 86th Street Station is the 12 portraits by Chuck Close, transformed into 10 foot high mosaics and embedded into the walls.  An amazing accomplishment for an artist, and a homage to his life’s work.

And here is me deep into my sketch in a photo taken by my wife.  Not quite as famous as Chuck Close but still happy to be making art in the new Second Avenue Subway line in New York City on New Year’s Day, 2017! 

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