On Black Friday, while many Americans were tearing down the walls of retailers for Christmas shopping deals Lauren and I were sketching on the
Skyline Drive near Charlottesville, VA. This stretch of highway in the
Shenandoah National Park runs along a beautiful ridge with countless views in every direction. We didn't have our paints with us so we did a number of quick pencil sketches from the various vistas, and then found some great spots to just take in the sunset, and afterglow. Our goal in pencil sketches like these is to capture the gesture and placement of the mountains, and get an idea of how we might compose them in a painting in the studio. If I go on to paint any of these later, I'll use principles of light and atmosphere, combined with imagination to fill in the missing information. Lauren asked me not to post her sketchbook pages, but here are mine:
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| Erik Koeppel, Sketchbook |
This was such a spectacular place, and I can't wait to go back with paints!
On the way home, we went to Washington, D.C. to the
National Gallery and the
Portrait Gallery to check out the Hudson River School paintings and other masterpieces therein. We looked at tons of fantastic work, but also sneaked a few photos of things that we don't already have pictures of in our art-book collection.
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| Thomas Cole, Arcadian Scene |
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| Thomas Cole, detail from Crawford Notch, NH |
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| Corot detail from a very large painting |
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| Cropsey |
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| George Inness |
It was a very inspiring trip, and we're excited to be back in the studio painting away!
Thank you for reading.
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