Vanderbilt Vista

Monday was a perfect day for painting along the Hudson River.

As an added pleasure, we were joined by two artists I greatly admire: Erik Tiemens (on bench to the left), one of the main conceptual designers for Lucasfilm, and Bill Mather, concept artist, matte painter, and author of Drawn to Beauty.

The park ranger of the Vanderbilt Estate appeared from nowhere and started telling us about the place.

He told us that the view we were painting was immortalized by Currier and Ives (above) and “painted by a lot of amateurs, like yourselves,” he said, gazing at my painting. He kindly overlooked the fact that Trusty Rusty spent three hours in the 15 minute parking lot.

After we finished, it was fun to see how all four of us brought out different aspects of the scene.

Jeanette did the small watercolor in the Moleskine book at lower left. Erik did a vertical composition in gouache, after sketching a couple of exploratory thumbnails. Bill worked patiently in pencil to describe the foliage textures. “I’m approaching it as if it was an etching,” he said.

Mine is the one in oil, 8x16 inches. The air was so misty that you could barely see the Catskill Mountain range, just a faint hint behind the white dots of the convent on the far shore.
-------------
Erik has a blog called Virtual Gouache Land, and a website, Water Sketch.
Bill has a blog and a web gallery.
The great art blog Lines and Colors has covered Erik, link, and Bill, link,
We were painting at the Vanderbilt Mansion site, link.
Currier and Ives image courtesy The Old Print Shop, link.