Memory of Washington

As mentioned in several previous posts, one of my winter-spring studio rituals is searching out and reviewing previous work. Sometimes that means dusting off older sketchbooks or even resurrecting drawings or paintings that have somehow been shuffled to the bottom of several stacks of such materials. So this week I found a watercolor sketchbook full of drawings and ink and wash paintings of a visit to Redmond, Washington. 

The area around Seattle, including eastern suburban communities like Redmond, is mostly forested with evergreens of several kinds. For someone like me from the Midwest, the backdrop of spruces, and the like is jarring at first. This sketch, from 2009, was done one dawn in a pocket sketchbook that I carried back then. The tall, tall trees against a different sunrise than we see in Iowa made this one a "keeper."

The basis for the sketch was actually an ink drawing of the trees and underlying foliage. I overlaid wide washes of "dirty" sky colors and then mixed a dark, cool array of greens for the evergreen boughs and underlying shadows.