Bish Bash Falls- the early days -pencil drawing

When I was much, much younger in my teens and early 20's I was very much into the Photo Realism art movement. I would paint from one of my photographs and would meticulously work on every single detail. This technique was also applied my drawings. Pictured here is a poor iphone capture of one of very few remaining images from that era of work. This is a graphite pencil drawing on paper of Bash Bish Falls, a waterfall in Bash Bish Falls State Park in the Taconic Mountains of southwestern Massachusetts. I grew up in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate NY. My inspiration and backyard was the same landscape that lead to the development of the famed Hudson River School of Painting. The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, including the Catskill, Adirondack, and White Mountains. For almost a decade I followed in the footsteps of these Hudson River painters and often I would seek out the exact location where they painted. I tried to capture images of both the location and atmosphere I found in their original paintings. The technique I used in my work was to grid off one of my photographs into small squares ( typically a one inch grid system) and then turn the image upside down so my focus was on the details and not the finished piece. The resulting work would take many hours of very painstaking focus. I am getting back into painting with less focus on the details and more on the "painterly" qualities of the work. I struggle at times trying to be more loose with the brush and less rigid with color choices. Hopefully my new style will take hold in 2020. #artist #danielislandartist #painter #painterly #superrealsim #charlestonartist #lowcountrypainter #art #danielisland #scpainter #scartist #hudsonriverschool #hudsonvalley #catskillmountains