Sequim sights

For a while now, I've been following a Facebook page (called "Sequim Outdoors") generated by people (mostly awesomely talented photographers) who live in Sequim, Washington and who portray the delights of nature, from birds and wild animals to forest paths and streams to ancient barns and lavender farms. The latter are why I originally started following, because I was intrigued by Sequim's claim to be the lavender capitol of North America. It's in Washington State—how can lavender thrive there, when everyone knows a dry, warm climate like Provence is the ideal place to grow lavender? Well, apparently even in rainy Washington there are microclimates that fool you, and Sequim's is one of them. They have a big week-long lavender festival every July just to prove it.

I love pictures of old farms and old barns, and Sequim and the surrounding towns have their share. I decided to try painting one of them today; I wish, in retrospect, that I had used my big watercolor paper, because at the size I worked in my sketchbook, I could only fit most of the barn and little of the surrounding scene. But I did get to play with how to convey the feeling of the ancient wood, and perhaps this will be a test run for a larger painting.

Since I'm not drawing first this month, I decided that the only way to capture the texture of this wooden structure was to almost literally paint every single board separately. I could see the divisions or seams between sections of the barn (loft doors, main door, side door), so I sectioned it out and simply made strokes in the right proportions for each section and then connected them all afterwards. It mostly worked, although the peak of the barn is much more shallow than the one in the photograph—I didn't go extreme enough. But it still achieved my objective, which was to come up with a way to paint it that felt accurate to its construction. I particularly enjoyed the variation in the weathering of the wood.

Thanks to photographer Paul Sanders for the inspirational photograph!

DAY 27: SEQUIM BARN

#30x30DirectWatercolor2019

In the sketchbook...