A little further along the Christina river just South of Wilmington, Delaware one comes to the Russel W. Peterson Wildlife Refuge where we spent quite a lot of time wandering around each day. A wonderful place to visit full of breeding birds, deer, Eastern Cottontails and groundhogs! The occasional Bald Eagle too and I had great views of an adult Peregrine Falcon soaring in the heat and humidity. Some watercolor studies followed and helped capture the mood of the place while also serving as the basis for future paintings (below).
This is a view looking East from the bridge over the train tracks. It was early morning and the sun had just come up - the colours reflecting beautifully in the river and a slight haze in the distance.
This view is looking South across the marsh with early clouds building.
These sketchbook studies are about 5" x 8" and 9" x 8" respectively. Although quick studies, they do help me tremendously as they often serve to tie down images and ideas that I carry around in my head - usually after seeing something new as was in this case. Another reason for keeping these sketchbook studies simplified is that I don't want to get down too much at the time as I prefer my finished paintings to develop from my own response to the scene instead of copying it exactly as it is.
From these watercolor studies and others I was able to complete the vertical marsh scene shown at the top. I'm still trying to get a better photo of this one as I have found dark paintings extremely difficult to capture digitally. Anyway I'm sure that more landscapes will come out of this trip, in the meantime I'm working on something different which I'll show next time. Marsh Evening is in oils, size 10" x 8" (26cm x 20cm).
4 comments:
These little landscapes do what they were intended to do; Put the viewer, (mentally) right into the scene. You did a great job handling the greens in the top painting. These paintings have a very natural feel to them.
As the other John said, nice shades of green in the top image
I like the bridge sketch as well....it is leading who knows where ?
John thanks, I'm grateful for the comments on my smaller watercolor landscapes as although they are studies, I'm never sure just how successful they are. I appreciate your feedback on the oils too!
John H, we actually dropped down to the bridge and walked the tracks for awhile but didn't see any trains - or anything else for that matter. I have a feeling that line is seldom used as for all the times we visited the reserve, we only saw a freight train once and even that one was gone by the time we got to the bridge. I think it could have been useful knowing the train schedules and I would have loved to have been there ready with a camera when a locomotive came through - especially if it was early morning.
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