Many years ago I created studies in colored pencil and always intended to go back and paint it either in oils or acrylic. I never got around to this one but I was revisiting my old drafts and decided to use one of the rough drafts to create this watercolor painting. Along the way I figured out old rough drafts are like old notes... we get better over time at recording necessary bits. While I feel like there's a lot of missing relevant information for me creating it today, it was nice to close the loop on something started many years ago.
If you were able to visit the historic Fort Vancouver site today (in Vancouver, Washinton USA) you would notice sometime between when I created the rough draft and now - they decided to paint the walls white. I've seen a lot of blacksmiths shops across the country and to be honest with you I've never seen one with whitewashed walls. It would have been excessively expensive to do at the time and if it didn’t make money, they didn’t do it. So it was a conscious decision on my part to use the information I recorded thirty years ago for this piece when it was in its original state.
Because I wanted to create a sense of stepping back in time I used just two colors to create this piece - burnt umber and prussian blue. Watercolor on cotton paper.
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