In October, I took a small extended weekend, as the first sort-of vacation I had in over a year of rather intense work, changes, and shifts.
The destination, was the incredible region of Serra de São Mamede, on the border between Portugal and Spain. It’s a region rich in beautiful towns, architecture, and stunning natural sights.
I rarely have time to draw while on vacation, since the priority is always to rest or explore, but this time I insisted on taking a little Moleskin sketchbook, and taking 15-20 minutes to draw a few locations. One of which was the waterfall at Pego do Inferno.
Little did I know, that that waterfall has a very intense legend attached it.
It’s said that, over millennia, there have been stories of people falling into this lake, and never being seen again. One of the most recent stories, has been around for 50 years or so, of a man driving an ox-cart nearby, and falling in, ox-cart and all. Neither him, his carriage or his animals were ever found. Whether that’s true or not, is hard to tell, but much more recently, a young man did drown there, so the local authorities advice against swimming in these waters – beautiful and enticing though they might be.
We did not swim there. Not just to heed the warnings (which I most likely would have ignored in my intense curiosity), but mostly because it was a freezing cold morning, and there was still a whole day or trekking ahead.
Making of Video
While cascata de S. Julião got only a photo taken, for Pego do Inferno I recorded the whole watercoloring process.
It started with the sketch on site, but since the goal of the vacation was to trek, explore, and rest, and I only had the 15-20 minutes I mentioned above, I followed the excellent tip I received from a workshop with Luís Simões, Travel Sketcher Around The World, and took a photo of the location to later color at home.
Starting a watercolor painting with a pigment pen is a quick and easy way to get a landscape down, and practice some difficult subjects with watercolor. The pen outlines are there to define the shapes, so you don’t have to worry about getting that sort of sharpness and definition from the watercolor, and can focus on color mixing, and exploring the play of light and shadow, without ever losing the initial lines you sketched.
If this is something you never tried before, I hope the video below shows you just how simple it can be to tackle complex subjects like water and foliage, in a quick and easy way.
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