Tag Archives: Wachusett Meadow

Spring Snowstorm

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Barry V.

This is from a series of posts by MABA resident artist Barry Van Dusen

Wachusett Meadow Wildlife Sanctuary, Princeton on March 21, 2016

Horse Barn at WM - at 72 dpi

This is the Horse Barn at Wachusett Meadow Wildlife Sanctuary, not far from my home. It’s the first day of spring, and through the night, six inches of fresh snow has cloaked the landscape in white. In the course of this mild winter, I’ve had precious few opportunities to paint winter landscapes with SNOW, and I’d like to have some in my Mass Audubon Residency portfolio. This may be my last opportunity, so I head down to Wachusett Meadow with my field kit.

The sky is leaden gray and flurries are still coming down when I start this watercolor. I take special care to capture the close tonalities and soft shadows of a snowy day, and try to develop lots of soft edges to create the effect of moist, dense air.

Horse Barn, Wachusett Meadow - w NO snow - at 72 dpi

You can see a few sheep in the corral, and the open door to the lower level of the barn, where barn swallows zip in and out in summer to their nests on the overhead beams. Mass Audubon has recently done a lot of work on this structure. Large parts of the stone foundation have been rebuilt to shore up a sagging roofline, other parts have been re-shingled, and bright new barn doors have been added on the front. I’m happy to see venerable old New England barns treated with such care and respect!

Later in my studio, I decide that I want an even “snowier” effect. I use a technique of spattering white droplets over the sheet to give the effect of a spring snow squall.

Snow Spatter set-up - at 72 dpi

I’ve found that acrylic Gesso works well for this – it’s very opaque, very white, and has some body to it for spattering with a large bristle brush. You’ve got to thin down the Gesso with water to get the right consistency, and perhaps this is the trickiest part. If you get it right, you’ll produce the right size droplets when flicked off the brush. Those red sheets of paper are my “test” sheets. I’m aiming for a mix of large and small droplets, since in a snowstorm you see larger flakes closer to you, and smaller ones further off.

Horse Barn, Wachusett Meadow - w SNOW - at 72 dpi

The Horse Barn, Wachusett Meadow, watercolor on Arches rough, 10.25″ x 14″

I’ve learned to use restraint with this technique, and yes, I’ve ruined a few good watercolors by overdoing it!

Unstuck in Time

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Barry V.

This is from a series of posts by MABA resident artist Barry Van Dusen

Wachusett Meadow Wildlife Sanctuary, Princeton on June 5, 2015
As I’m working on this small landscape painting of the Crocker house and horse barn at Wachusett Meadow, my mind drifts back in time to when this was a working farm.

The Crocker Farm, Wachusett Meadow - at 72 dpi

The Crocker Farm, watercolor on Winsor & Newton cold-press, 7.5″ x 11″

I notice that most of the structures I can see from this viewpoint date back to the 1830s or earlier. The new day camp building is hidden by the copse of trees, so the new picnic pavilion is the only modern structure visible from where I’m sitting (the new solar panels are further to the right and out of my view). My apologies to the hard-working Wachusett Meadow staff – I decide to leave out the pavilion and include only the old farm buildings. So, this scene is part fact and part imagination – harking back to an earlier time before a wildlife sanctuary existed here…

Warbler Wave

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Barry V.

This is from a series of posts by MABA resident artist Barry Van Dusen

Mid-May, 2015
By the middle of May in Massachusetts, large numbers of migrant wood warblers are streaming through the state on their way to breeding grounds here or further north. It all happens so quickly, and I experience a manic urge to try and get it all down while it lasts. So many birds, so little time! Instead of trying to do a finished watercolor with a full background of each of the species I encounter, I take a different approach.

I purchase several 9”x12” sketchbooks loaded with heavy watercolor paper made by Stillman and Birn. My logic is that I can use these in field or studio to do quicker bird portraits with minimal background elements or no background at all. The heavy, archival stock will give me the option to remove and frame some of the pages later. Here is a selection from the Mass Audubon properties I visited through May.