Pat Gladden, one of the painters at the workshop I taught last weekend at Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, shared this small sketch with me by email. She liked its simplicity of design. In it I think she made excellent use of her preferred 300 lb. rough Arches watercolor paper. The hefty tooth of the paper allows for great drybrush techniques, and yet as seen in her sky, the paper still performs well for wet into wet applications of color.
Simplicity is a word that comes to mind to describe the summer world of Cascade Head in Oregon, where Sitka Center is located. The purity, the freshness, the feeling of the world made new in the sparkling air, the direct thrust of cliffs, headlands, and sea stacks through crashing waves, the immensity of Sitka spruce trees: everything here is unambiguous--perhaps the only questions remain in the haunting rising notes of the Swainson's Thrush song. Many thanks to Pat, Bob and Terri for sharing their work with me and my readers!
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