Landscapes, Arakoon and Hat Head National Parks, by Elaine (jaguarish)

Hi everyone, been great seeing all your spring scenes and landscapes!  Below are some sketches covering both themes, as we just went camping for Easter and the following week.  I've set the location of this post to the actual location of the sketches if you are interested to see where it is on the map!  I did all these in a Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook (A5 size), one of my favorite sketchbooks after having tried many different kinds.

This scene at the site next door caught my eye, as the young lady fashionably dressed in fluffy boots was inflating the canoe, stepping repeatedly on the foot pump for at least half an hour.

Below is a scene from a windy day, with only windsurfers enjoying the wide shallow bay.  Normally the water is full of families swimming, even though it's only knee deep for ages.  Just as I was sketching the far away windsurfer, this other fellow stopped on the sand right in front of me to assemble his sail.  There was actually also one (crazy) small boy swimming (you can see him clinging to the rotted pier) while his dad and brother shivered on shore.

We did a few walks overland, past German Monument to Little Bay one day, and over Little Smoky (peak) to Gap Beach another day.  (Little Bay: next two sketches below; Gap Beach after that.)

 

One day the guys took the kids fishing on Back Creek, and I walked around a bit but it was almost too gorgeous to sketch.  Eventually I found a spot to observe a footbridge which arches high in the air (I think originally for boat passage).  Teenagers came by on a regular basis to jump from the high spot down to the water.  I started this as a pencil drawing, fascinated by the shapes and shadows, but got annoyed by trying to define every edge.  So I erased all my pencil work and went straight in with my brush, and I quite like the suggestive/impressionistic result!