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On Thursday morning, I went to Platte Clove with a friend. It was a hot day and we wanted to find a cool spot. We hiked past the charming red cottage of the Platte Clove Conservation Area, down the steep, slippery path, and were rewarded by the sound of rushing water and sparkling falls in the morning light. The rocks glistened red and orange in the morning, though they started to cool in color temperature in the afternoon. The greens and rusts in the water were captivating. I don’t know how tall this waterfall is; I’ll have to research that. But I’d guess it’s over 100 feet high. I stayed at a spot about halfway up the slope. My friend went down to water level.
I was there with my husband a few weeks ago and did a watercolor sketch. This time, I brought my ultra-light pastel setup. Sometimes I arrive on location and wish I’d brought different media than what was in my pack. This time I felt like I had the perfect medium to capture the contrasts and strong colors I saw.
As for trying to find a cool spot on a hot day, we actually ended up being chilly there by the waterfall! There was cool mist in the air that seemed to stay within the bowl formed by the rocks surround the falls. Every so often, water would splash on my pastel from somewhere above. I think it accumulated on the leaves until droplets let loose, and they always seemed to have to land on my painting!
Please click the image for a more accurate and larger view of the painting.
One of the highlights of my springtime painting excursions is always when the cherry blossoms are blooming along the Hudson River at Boscobel Restoration. It may take me ages to get the image posted, but I always try to get the painting done while the blossoms are there. Last year I missed my window of opportunity, and I almost missed my chance this year. Fortunately they bloomed very late and I was able to get over to Boscobel before they were gone.
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This is a scene in my back yard. I painted it from life in early spring, while watching the wood ducks swimming, and enjoying that short time of spring color before the entire landscape goes green. I think the colors of early spring are my favorites. They have a subtle beauty that goes overboard in fall. In spring they feel balanced, natural, and calmingly subdued. Of course, that could just be the way I feel after the bleak starkness of winter!
I’ll bet you were all expecting to see the conclusion of the oil painting I’ve been working on from this very vantage point! Well, I decided to meet an old friend for an early lunch today, so couldn’t get out on location in the morning to finish that one up. However, I was thinking that one very effective way to study the scene many more times would be to do it in several different media. While examining the vista on location yesterday morning, I was thinking about how I’d approach it in watercolor. This painting is the result, which I painted last night from a photo I’d taken earlier in the day.
I painted this with the new QoR watercolor paints by Golden Artist Colors. I sampled some from the Golden factory a couple of months ago, before they were sent out to stores, and subsequently bought a boatload of tubes when they became available. I just love these paints! They are really vibrant and intense, and most importantly, they rewet very easily when they dry out in my palette. For a multi-media artist who’s not doing watercolors every day and thus keeping the paints moist, they are ideal. Most of the painting was done with a #6 squirrel mop, and then I did the fine lines and details with a #6 sable round.
As for the oil painting, I’m hoping to go back on Friday morning and hopefully finish that one up. But if I’m not able to finish it then, it gives me a good excuse to return yet again to this amazing spot high above Kaaterskill Clove, and contemplate all the Hudson River School painters who stood there before me.
I made a lot of progress today, but by 9:30am, the sun had come around the tree line and illuminated the foreground. I am determined to catch it in shadow in the painting, but it might take one more visit to be able to finish this off so early in the morning, unless I finish it from a photo. The scene beyond the painting is bleached out because the painting was upright and not catching as much light as the vista beyond. But notice how light the foreground is in the actual scene above, which was photographed around noon. Now compare it to the image below, which is how I find the view early in the morning, with the dark foreground I crave!
So I guess it will be awhile longer before I can post the finished painting. But I’m determined to get it done this week!
If you’d like to see what it looked like after my first session, click here to see my previous post.
I really liked that dark foreground pulling the viewer into the light beyond. Within a couple of hours, the sun poked above the tree line and spilled light all over the delicious darks. It happened in an instant, and although I like the light foreground too, I decided to stick with my game plan, and return early tomorrow morning to complete the painting the way I had intended. The light foreground painting will have to wait for another day! With a little luck, this one will get finished tomorrow.
Click here to see the following day’s progress on the painting.
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A couple of weeks ago, I went to paint at a private estate in Platte Clove. There were beautiful mountain views, colorful marsh scenes, and a serene spring-fed pond, but what really captivated me was the graceful arc of this apple tree leaning over the view.
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People pass by this beautiful waterfall around the horseshoe bend on Route 23a, heading through Kaaterskill Clove into the mountains. There is a big sign next to it that says, “Kaaterskill Falls”. But this is not Kaaterskill Falls; rather, the trail that leads up the mountainside to the base of Kaaterskill Falls begins at this point! This significant, but smaller charmer, is Bastion Falls. I’ve walked past it many, many times on my way up the trail to paint the famous Kaaterskill Falls. For once I decided to stay at the trail head and sketch Bastion Falls.
I had my little dog BB with me, and I’d spent the entire morning working on a larger painting from a second tier of this waterfall. I went home for a late lunch, returning with my dog, lightweight pastel setup, and a gardening cushion to put on a rock to sit on. I have to say, I really loved working on this one. It’s still in a sketchy stage and I was considering finishing it; but some things are best left with the spontaneous freshness and expressive strokes that further refinement can so often obliterate. I’ve decided to call it “done” just the way it is. It has the energy, movement, and high contrast that I wanted to capture. And I want to go back and do another!
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Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to take an animal sketching and painting workshop with my animal-painting idol, Joe Weatherly. Since then, I’ve been working on some anatomical sketches and other animal studies in the evenings whenever I have a chance. It’s going to be hard to get a lot done during plein air painting seasons, but I can definitely see diving into this in a big way when winter comes around! I learned so much, not only about drawing and painting animals, but also about the course of study I need to put myself through to be able to capture them convincingly from life. They don’t stay still like human models do!
I went with some painting friends to Stonykill Farm in Wappingers Falls, NY. It was a perfect opportunity to practice some cow-sketching. I chased this cow around until he was still long enough to at least get his basic shape in. He had the most gorgeous golden color and a regal disposition. I couldn’t get too far with the painting on location and had to finish it from a photo. I suspect that will be the case much of the time, though I know I’ll get better at painting animals on the fly as I get more practice and do anatomical studies.
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On the day we planned to go to Frederic Church’s Olana estate, it rained all morning. Honestly, I was so tired by that point that I was grateful for a morning to sleep in a bit later and tend to some things around the house, like laundry! I headed to Olana when the rain stopped and painted until a couple of hours before sunset. This was my second painting of the day, done from my favorite area of the 250 acre property. It affords the best Catskill skyline on the site, as well as direct western views to take full advantage of late day backlighting and sunsets. The evaporating moisture from the earlier rainfall created a mist in the valley of the mountains, softening edges and throwing light in between the slopes and hills. The strong western sun illuminated the edges of the foliage as it streamed across the river. It was a stunning scene, and I wish I’d painted it larger! Since I’d done a 12×16 earlier in the afternoon, I was happy to give my broken foot a rest and paint this one from my comfy chair in a smaller size.
Last week I painted up above Kaaterskill Falls with a few friends. In fact, I spent the entire week painting at some of my favorite spots with a fabulous group of artists from New York Plein Air Painters. This is the top of Kaaterskill Falls, right where Lake Creek goes over the edge and drops 269 feet to the base of the two-tiered waterfall. I try to stay away from the edge and spare myself the vertigo! Many of the Hudson River School painters did famous works from this very spot. The light up there is fantastic at any time of day, with beautiful colors and strong values. It’s a challenging scene to paint, which hopefully I’ve come to handle better over time! This was painted very directly with oils, and then I added a few final touches and made a couple of adjustments in the studio — like picking out the bugs!