Tag: vacation photos

Posted in drawing

Sunday Sketching: Value Study

Posted on by Laura Kate

For over a year, I have been ruminating over an idea I have for an art quilt. It is inspired by our trip last year to Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.

For those not familiar with the park, it is known for what’s called the Badlands. These are sedimentary rock formations that have been eroded away, displaying the different layers almost like a layer cake.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about.

The timing and circumstances of the trip were counter-productive to getting any good photographs. It was high noon in mid-July. I had no idea how hot it could be in North Dakota during the summer. To compound things, the whole western edge of the United States was on fire last year. We were about a thousand miles away from the smoke and yet haze covered the entire sky and dampened the light. Nearly all the color was washed out of the scenery. No shadows. No highlights.

Here is my best photograph in the park that day.

To get a suitable reference photo of the overlook, I resorted to the Internet. This photo was taken by Mike Hanson. It is 2017 and it must be a sunset view.

Bill added the segmenting lines so that I could scale it up to size I wanted. Using the grid method, I transferred the major shapes to paper and sketched a value study.

Very well pleased with the result, I moved on to the fun stuff: selecting a color scheme and swatching it out in watercolor. I chose a split complementary scheme focused on orange, with blue-violet and blue-green as the complements.

Now my creative juices are flowing. I’m excited to pick out some fabrics and start painting them!

Posted in drawing, painting

Belize Journal – A Memory

Posted on by Laura Kate

I am returning to my Belize journal in an effort to coax from my memory the images I experienced on the return boat ride from our snorkeling outing. Memories are all I have of this experience. Because of the choppiness of the ride and the spray of the sea no cameras were in use during this part of the trip.

First, it’s important to mention that I wasn’t wearing glasses. They were stowed away so I wouldn’t lose them overboard. I believe that state of fuzzy vision contributed mightily to the dream-like quality of the experience. Here’s what I remember.

I was sitting on the port side of the boat, with my left hand to the south and my face to the west. On either side of me the sea rolled by, with bright, transparent turquoise water punctuated by amorphous, dark green forms of sea grass and coral clumps below the surface. After the first several miles had passed, I began to detect bits and pieces of the shoreline. They came in the form of striated horizontal lines, looking like a slow fade from one color to the next. First sea green, then turquoise, followed by the strip of land separating the bay from the lagoon. The land was dark, with bumpy forms of vegetation. Beyond and above that was a cool blue strip of atmosphere. Was it mist, fog or ordinary clouds? I couldn’t tell.

Eventually I detected the purplish forms of the mountains – roughly pyramid shaped, overlapping and rising from the mist. Above the mountains stretched the sky. I have no memory of its color. It could have been layered in clouds, thinning out to pale blue at the apex. Or it could have been a sky blue, pale just above the mountains, and then intensifying into deep blue in the upper atmosphere. I wish I could recall this detail.

Preliminary palette for Belize memory

This dream-like state carried on until we passed through the narrow strip and returned to the inlet from where we had started.

I will attempt to paint my impression. The colors are definitely more vivid to me than the shapes are. So, I plan to render the shapes in geometric, abstract fashion.

Preliminary sketch, Belize Memory

Now that I have a rough layout and some color options, I can start doing watercolor sketching. I’m pretty excited to start on this one and hope to get painting during the next few weeks. I’m also aware that the design has much potential as a fiber work.

Posted in painting

Belize Journal III

Posted on by Laura Kate

Our flight to Belize was almost due south, as the country lies on the eastern edge of Central America. Its landform is in the shape of a rectangle, with its north border on the Yucatan, the south on Guatemala and the east faces the Caribbean Sea. From the Belize City airport, we traveled more than two hours by car to Hopkins Bay resort. Upon arriving at our lodging, we got our first look at the beach.

Hopkins Bay Resort

The little geography lesson I wrote above wasn’t just for your information. It was to explain why all of the resorts in Belize face east. This fact brought us great joy each morning between the hours of 5 and 6 am, when the sun cleared the horizon.

Pre-Sunrise, Photo by Bill Riley

Bill was always up and away with his camera well ahead of the key moment. I seldom overslept it as a result of another curious phenomena. With great regularity, around this time of dawn, I heard a mysterious tapping sound, as if fingers on the window – rat-tat-tat-tat. I thought Bill was trying to get my attention. But no one was in sight.

Ah, the sun was just coming up.

We eventually concluded that it was a bird that came tapping, although we never caught it in the act.

When I returned home, I was keen to paint a Hopkins Bay sunrise. I chose the above photo as my reference, although I had to lighten it up quite a bit to see the colors and the details sufficiently.

Hopkins Bay Sunrise, Belize

It took me two tries to paint the sky to my satisfaction. Pigments were new gamboge, quinacridone red, prussian blue, Thalo blue, carbazole violet, raw sienna, burnt sienna and a little transparent orange.

I miss you, Hopkins Bay.