I live two hours from the tippy top of the North Georgia mountains — just an hour from the foothills. I go as often as I can and hike or just ride around and look. I take the ol’ sketchbook and paints with me too.
Years ago I discovered the forest service roads up there. These roads are graded dirt and gravel and are used by the forest service for fire control access and land management. Some are well maintained such that a sedan can travel them if need be. As such, the outdoorsy of us just load up the ol’ Toyota and go do a little fishing in a cool, remote stream or lake — or visit one of the more accessible waterfalls.
The young and restless go mountain biking and multi-day hiking and camping on a regular basis. There is Appalachian Trail access up in those hills too. That’s quite handy if you’re actively being badgered to join the AARP and not generally known to be, shall we say…”active”, by your advice giving exercise and wellness experts at the office.
With a little effort you can drive to the AT on a Saturday morning, hike a mile uphill and a mile downhill back to the car, then spend the rest of the day ridin’ around, eatin’ bar-b-que and banana pudding, and being generally lazy and carefree in the cool mountain air — while they go to the gym, play a set of tennis, or heaven forbid run for eight or ten miles in ninety-five degree Georgia humidity, all on a diet of fruit, veggies, yogurt, and tofu.
Then on Monday, when they brag to you about the healthy exercise and eating they did over the weekend, tell your domesticated athlete, city slicker, tofu eating peers that YOU hiked the Appalachian Trail. Hah! Take that!
But I digress…
The painting is from my memory of traveling many of these forest roads. They are calming, remote…and interestingly…they lead to places you didn’t know were there. As you drive along you wonder, “where’s this go?” And that is oddly fun.
2 Comments
You do such a great job on these pastoral-scenes-from-memory, Don. I would never be able to get such a realistic feeling scene. I’m curious about how vividly you “see” it in your imagination, or whether it’s a sketchier idea that tends to come alive on the page as you start to paint.
More importantly, when are you going to do a drawing that involves barbecue and/or banana pudding???
Hi Karen,
Thanks for the kind comments
The scenes start with a pen sketch using a .005 micron pen. Sometimes I do a thumbnail or two with a pencil to get a good composition idea. That’s the memory part.
Then the colors and light happen as I add the color with watercolor. Highlights are added with a little white gouache tinted with a teeny bit of the desired color.
Gouache always dries considerably darker than mixed so it’s a little hard to get used to at first.
Using that little micron pen has made a lot of difference. The fatter ink lines from heavier pens have tended to overpower the scenes a bit. The tiny pen leaves just the right amount of ink visible in the finished painting.
On the lake cliffs post no ink was used, just pencil. It pretty much disappears by the time the painting is finished.
Hope this helps
Thanks again for the kind words
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