I started a watercolor today. This was kind of a palette cleanser after the past couple weeks of pastel work I did in order to prepare for the art night at my kids’ school. I enjoyed it for sure, and made a few things I’ll hang onto. But it didn’t infect me enough to make me toss aside drawing and painting.

We spent some time hiking in the great smokey mountains for spring break this year and saw a couple black bears. I really like waterfalls, and one of my hopes is spend some time painting them plain air. For now I have to be okay with using my own photos as reference.

The bears were an addition, and we were there before the rhododendrons were blooming, so I added some color to imply they were already blooming in this painting. I am a little bummed we weren’t there to see them in their full glory, but we did get to see the green creeping out of the trees a little more each day and that was a pretty awesome thing to experience.

I’m not sure what else I’ll do with this one. I feel like I could do some moss covered trees in the foreground or something to push the bears and the water fall back a bit more as well as to get some more contrast. One of my main goals with this nature painting is to do a better job of finding the light drama in the world so I can recreate it in my illustrations down the line.