I spent the afternoon wandering around the Shoal Creek Living History Museum in Hodge Park, just outside Liberty, Missouri. I had the place nearly to myself and meandered around sketching the various historical buildings with my Lamy Safari and occasionally using my watercolor travel kit.
The buildings here have all been relocated from other places and brought together to provide a snapshot of what our area used to look like. As usual, I scribble with a pen first and then decide whether or not to add splashy washes of color. The jail depicted here looks to me to be one lonely and forlorn place to spend a night locked up!
This is an old one room school house. One thing I try to do when I sketch locations is use elements of the locale to "lead the eye" around or through the composition. Thus, I'm always on the look out for diagonal lines, fences, tree lines, roads, etc. that conveniently allow this to take place.
And just up the hill, atop a heavy wooden post, sits the old school bell. It's cast steel and looks like it would be very, very heavy. I enjoyed "keeping it simple" and just letting the colors run together to create the illusion of rust and patina.
Here's another example of that principle. I enjoy finding a point-of-view that lets the road do the heavy lifting for me in the composition. I'm very interested in going back to draw that mill in the foreground, by the way.
A group of visitors from outside the country were very interested in my sketches. Likewise, I was interested in them as well. I only managed to get one sketch made of their group, an older couple. The others were simply moving around too fast for me to even get a "grab sketch" made of them!
Here I was, just playing around. I needed a break from the pen and made this simple watercolor sketch. I think this is some sort of well house.
Shoal Creek has a lot of interesting vantage points from which to draw and paint. It's quite rich in architectural subject matter and is situated in a very pleasant green location. Best of all, it's free! I'll be heading back again because these sketches only scratch the surface.
