This past summer I had the pleasure of teaching watercolor at Silver Bay, on Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York. This particular view of these three Catalpa trees is from the front porch of The Inn, looking toward the Boat House.
It was rainy the night before and on the morning of the day when I started this watercolor. Normally our watercolor class would be held somewhere out on the grounds of Silver Bay, a YMCA conference center, and we would be painting near the shore of the lake, or along one of the tree lined paths, or by a beach perhaps, but on this gray, rainy day our painting group gathered under the shelter of the porch to conduct our class.
In reflecting back, I have seen these three, old, tall trees from this porch location numerous times during the past 37 years, and have often read or painted while protected by their shade when sitting beneath them, but this was the first time I thought to do a painting of them.
The painting began as a quick class demonstration of how I sketch my subject onto a half-sheet of watercolor paper by using a #2 Ticonderoga pencil, and then begin mixing and laying in the first broad washes of color, followed by accenting (Note: the graphite for the original Ticonderoga pencil manufacturing company starting in 1913 was mined from this area (Graphite, New York), and their business office was located in nearby Ticonderoga, New York). After this drawing and painting introduction the class members go off nearby and get started on their own paintings, while I continue working for a short while before it is time for me to begin assisting the class members in their work, or provide another painting demonstration. All went well until I was about an hour into working on firming up the color and tone of the trees, foreground, and an overcast looking rainy sky, when the rain let up, and moments later the sun came through openings in the clouds. Except for me, almost everyone relaxing, visiting, or reading on the porch was smiling and pleased with the change in weather. In front of me, I had a half completed rainy day looking painting, on what turned out to be an obviously bright, warm, sunny day. During the next hour I finished the “rainy” painting from memory and did this partially as a painting demonstration for the class, it turned out fine, but I was unsatisfied with the result.
Overall I liked the watercolor, but felt it was only half completed and needed more work in several areas. I kept the painting in my campus guest room and looked at it for the next several days and into the following couple weeks while waiting for another rainy day so that I would be able to redo parts of the painting, but the weather forecasts promised beautiful summer weather for days and days to come. As a result of this nice weather situation I decided to redo the entire painting. Lacking a large sink or tub, I held the watercolor under the gentle spray of a shower head and using a paint brush I rinsed and lifted away most of the color from the paper, leaving behind a ghost image of what had been there previously. I then stretched the paper on a board and left it to dry overnight. The following day, I returned to the porch of the Inn with my watercolor gear and this stretched paper to make a fresh start on trying to capture a sense of the summer day, and the three trees.