New River Gorge: Drawing to Connect

Hello friends! Welcome to my first ever blog post-exciting I know! Here I will share my art experience with you: what I am working on, past projects, musings, adventures etc. Hopefully you enjoy it. At the very least, I am enjoying this process to keep myself excited about creating and stoked to share my works.

This past weekend, six friends and I made the journey to West Virginia to climb. The rock was beautiful. Sweeping expanses of yellow rock with twists and loops where stripes of iron rick rock turned it red. I could look up 100 feet into the air and still not see the top of the cliffs. Massive roofs accentuated with big lumps and cracks of rock made it enticing for any climber. I immediately wanted to try and capture the rock so that I could remember the awe inspiring feeling of looking up at these beautiful cliffs. And so, I sat and painted this:

While painting the above, I tried to capture the feeling of looking up through the trees at this beautiful rock. Because of this, the tree is slanted and the rock is at an extreme angle.

While drawing this, a group of climbers - white water raft guides from nearby companies- were intrigued. They were watching me paint and once I completed it, made sure to tell me how much they loved it.

Knowing this, I decided to give it to them. After all, this painting would sit in my sketch book and be appreciated every once in awhile whereas I know these people would appreciate it daily (they had a spot all ready in their house). And so, I tore it out, signed it, and tucked it under a raincoat.

Now I know that bit of my art and my appreciation for the region lives in West Virginia. It feels incredible.

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The rest of the weekend I tried to balance being present and simply watching the trees move, my friends climb, and enjoying the laughter. While I use art to connect with the people and things around me, sometimes I feel the need to just sit without a pen in my hand and enjoy the moment.

But alas, I am still my antsy self, and I found myself lunging for my notebook and my pens when I saw my friends standing in an interesting way or standing at all still. And so I have a book full of sketches (some good and some not so good) as they belayed their climber. This was a great challenge for myself because it meant I had to capture correct proportions while they moved position and distance from me.

Here is the outcome:

Expect to see more sketches like the above pen sketch of a figure. I really liked that style and I would like to develop it better so that I can easily draw people as they move by. It captures movement and weight in a really lovely way.

It was a lovely weekend filled with laughter and lots of stoke. I left the weekend feeling nothing but FIRED UP to train hard to climb and of course, to explore art.

As my parting gift to you, please enjoy this picture of Leo. He is an angel on earth, and I do wish he was mine. (He was a crag dog and the pup of a climbing couple we met while climbing.)

#climbing #paint #draw #pen #sketch #trees #rock