Hudson Fellowship Day 3

Lower Kaaterskill Falls "equisse" sketch

approx 9 x 12 inches

graphite pencil and white charcoal pencil on paper

I spent another day at Kaaterskill Falls. I like the boulders, the trees with exposed roots, and also the small waterfalls, so I found a composition with all three. In the above sketch I was just trying a compositional block-in. I tried to limit myself to 3 simple values, to help me break down the scene.

Water study, approx 9 x 12 inches

Earlier in the day I did the above sketch, trying to understand how a waterfall behaves.

Thumbnail/croquise
approx 4 x 5 inches

This was my first thumbnail sketch. It's tiny but the scene is complicated. I wanted to do a quick sketch and then move on to do about 4 or 5... but I ended up spending an hour and a half on just this one.

Hudson Fellowship Day II

View of Katerskill Falls with fellow sketchers at the bottom

Boulder with small waterfalls

graphite and white charcoal on toned paper

approx 9 x 12 inches

Tree roots with glimpse of waterfall

graphite and white charcoal on toned paper

approx 9 x 12 inches

I worked most the day lower down the trail, well below the falls. The river has boulders and fallen trees making miniature waterfalls all along it.

After 7 hours of drawing and light hiking I was very done for the day.... but had to wait for my more intrepid fellows to wrap it up before I could get a ride home. My fellow landscapers are a hearty bunch. Luckily a short rainfall came along and sent enough packing for me to catch a ride. (And luckily I was well prepared for rain after yesterdays' deluge.)

I definitely want to go back to the falls another day and work there again. But next time I'm taking my own transportation!

PS: The Grand Central Academy has it's own blog and they are updating the blog with posts about the Landscape Fellowship as well, lots of cool photos of our locations:

http://grandcentralacademy.blogspot.com/

Hudson Fellowship Day 1 - sketches

Drawing in the the Catskills

You are forgiven if you can't tell what the above sketch is meant to represent.... it has elements of a boulder and moss, but I got lost in the details and everything just became this amorphous organic mass. Anyway, before I could pull it back together thunder began to roll and I and my 25 fellow Fellows began a rain-soaked dash down a slippery mountainside.

The afternoon was salvaged when the sun came out and I was able to spend a couple hours sketching on the banks of a flat, wide creek with miniature waterfalls stretching across it.

So to catch up anyone who doesn't know what I am doing: I'm participating in a 1-month landscape workshop with the Hudson River Fellowship which began yesterday in upstate NY. The Fellowship is following the study of landscape using pre-Impressionist techniques, the same method we use for studying the figure: Breaking down the elements of form, value, color and composition into individual steps before attempting a painting that incorporates all of them.

So we are beginning with studies and thumbnails, and we are using the terminology that the European-trained American landscape painters used in the 19th century:

croquise: thumbnail composition, as little as 5 fast lines
etude: study of a detailed element, contour only or value drawing

equisse: compositional study, fleshed-out thumbnail
grisaille: monochromatic "wipe-out" painting done with burnt umber
pochard: a color study done outdoors - not concerned with drawing, just color notations

With all these elements the goal is to bring them home to the indoor studio and assemble a complete landscape painting.

More about the 19th Century American painters of the Hudson River School

HRF website recommended books

Excerpt of Asher B Durand's Letter on Landscape Painting
(I've heard these exist somewhere in audio format but I can't find them, if anyone knows where they can be found please let me know, it would be great to listen to while painting!)