This
is a detail of a watercolor I finished a couple of weeks ago. I named it “Sunny Beach.”
Then I looked through my photos for another
subject idea and settled on a waterfall.
In
August of 2014 I took a road trip down the Oregon side of the Columbia River
Gorge. I made a special point of
stopping at Multnomah Falls just east of Portland.
I
arrived there during a thunderstorm. I
elbowed my way through the crowds of tourists to literally soak up the scenic surroundings
and take a lot of photos.
Multnomah
is an impressive and marvelous waterfall which drops hundreds of feet off the
edge of the canyon past the Benson Bridge, then down to a second tier and eventually
flows into the Columbia River.
To
keep my version of the site within the parameters of a standard frame I
shortened the perspective of the falls a bit in my preliminary sketches.
Then I transferred the basic idea to an 11x14 inch piece of watercolor
paper and splashed on some colors after masking out the parts I wanted to stay
white.
I
indicated the layers of basaltic lava forming the steep walls of the Gorge, and
put down some layers of green which would become the lush foliage of the area.
From there it was a matter of playing with the contrast of lights
and darks. When this dried I removed the
masking and added more details.
This
is the final result. It doesn’t show the
sheer verticalness of the actual waterfall, but I did remove the crowds and added
a bit of sunlight to improve the weather and the surroundings.
This
work, the seashells, and many more of my watercolor paintings are available at
my Etsy site: Watercolors by Leenie.
