Cobalt Lake
Watercolour
©2012 Charlene Brown
My last full day in the Bugaboos was my best plein air painting
day ever! After an hour of sketching and a picnic lunch in a flower-filled
meadow beside a snowbank-encrusted pond, we descended to a ridge above
spectacular Cobalt
Lake.
Sara Genn got us off to an inspiring start with a demo on capturing
the spirit of a place in 20-minutes... First she covered the canvas completely
with a richly-hued under-painting of Sara-colours; then she carved out the craggy
cliffs and cols with a super-energized blizzard of titanium white. (As you can
see in the second picture below, when she tossed it to one side and began
another, her first demo was inspected by an oddly colour-matched caterpillar)
Then we each painted as fast as we could for 20 (well,
actually 30) minutes, and produced this array of captured spirits – shown laid
out for a totally uncritical crit.
Only then did we begin, and in most cases almost finish, our
serious paintings. What a day!
