Memorizing Lake Samish

Work in Progress: Samish Dawn 2


Work in Progress: Samish Dawn 1
I've spent a lot of time lately studying the sky. Early dawn I like to go to Lake Samish and watch the pink spread across the sky from the left and thinking what colors of blue and yellow I need to mix to create the upper portion of the sky and the blue reflections in the lake. I sketch, I take notes, I take photos but mostly, I'm training my memory to retain the details of the visual information. On the way back I swing by Lake Padden and it's always much brighter there, since it's a good 10 minutes later.

Whistler painted wonderful nocturnes and landscapes and he made just rough sketches and notes. He spent a great deal of time, according to his colleagues, training himself to remember visual information: composition, color, the details. I've been working on better observation and on training my visual memory on these visits to Lake Samish.

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