My project in Watercolor Landscapes: Experimental Tools and Techniques course

My project in Watercolor Landscapes: Experimental Tools and Techniques course

STOWE, VERMONT...

I just completed a whimsical interpretation of one of the planet's most beautiful places, especially in the Fall...Stowe, Vermont. This Stowe watercolour landscape is 8" x 5".

The tiny village of Stowe is my favourite old stomping ground (of any place I've been to in the world) and, if it wasn't in the States and I wasn't living here, this is the spot where I'd hand a shingle...Just thinking of the place evokes these fond memories: skiing, Smuggler's Notch, hiking, the quaint general store of eclectica and handicrafts, eateries, live music, playing chess and backgammon by a fireplace, some rock-on "nights on the town". The mortise-and-tenon wooden coffee table in my front room was made by an artisan just down that road from the steepled church.).

Stowe was where the very musical Austrian family, the von Trapps (famous for their story in the movie "Sound of Music"), relocated to escape the Nazis; they then set up their famous von Trapp Lodge. The village's population is still only 201 people.
The rock group Deep Purple liked Stowe so much, they hung out, rented a ski house, and recorded the album, "Perfect Strangers" ("Smoke on the Water", etc.), there in 1984.

Before this course, I thought that "landscapes" were one of the easiest genres of painting to do...not true! For example, the Copenhagen streetscapes done by Christian Kiovumaa are stunning in their building detail, amount of visual information conveyed, austere moods, composition, and perspective. His landscapes actually look like photographs in some cases.