On the first official day of winter, it’s time to bring the outdoors painting indoors, and experiment with some of the methods for ‘textures in watercolor.” The scene here is one of the view a few days ago from a platform overlooking Great Falls from the Maryland side of the Potomac River. This is part of the U.S. National Park system, which is the celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. There are ecological wonders in this area found few places elsewhere in the world, and just a short drive from the nation’s capital.
Illustration: “Great Falls in Winter”, (approx 14″ x 10″) with watercolor and gouache by Black Elephant Blog author
In real-life, this was a misty scene of blue-grey and Indian red with wildlife, including blue herons, nearby. With some masking fluid to keep the paper dry for the areas of waterfalls, and some thin strips of drafting tape to preserve the impression of tree trunks in the distance I tried to recapture the scene. A bit of watercolor seeped under the drafting tape pieces, in the end, but the impression oddly may be more realistic. In the actual scene there were grays, greens, blues, ochres, rusty red, and white, as well as browns, proving that even “a gray day” has lots of color!
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