Lake Champlain at Crown Point

Lake Champlain at Crown Point 12x9 pastel, copyright 2011

I've finally gotten around to posting this one from our New York trip earlier this summer.  I could blame work, family obligations and a quick trip to Toronto for being so slow about it, but the truth is that I just wasn't happy with it and didn't know why.  It was one of those paintings that is perfectly fine, but somehow not quite right.  

This morning I finally realize that it was just boring.  Too many blues and greens and not enough interesting lines which made it flat and dull.  So this morning I warmed it up with yellows and oranges, using short vertical strokes over the long horizontal ones.  It's amazing how much the seemingly little things can make such a big difference. 

By the way, this is the same park as the previous pastel.  Beautiful spot, I highly recommend it.

Meadow at Crown Point, New York

Meadow at Crown Point, New York 12x16 pastel, copyright 2011

Last week the family took our summer vacation, this time driving from Niagara Falls through the 1000 Islands region to Quebec City, then down to Lake Champlain and back home.  With a very busy schedule, we always try to pack as much into our vacations as possible, this time putting about 2300 miles on the car.  This isn't very conducive for sitting and sketching, so I typically take several hundred photos in the hopes that some of them will work as references on the return.  This is one of them, the first of many I hope.

Crown Point is at the narrowest spot in Lake Champlain, and the site of a French fort (Fort St. Fredric) and supporting community in the early eighteenth century.  The French destroyed it in 1759, abandoning the area to the British, who replaced it with Fort Crown Point, one of the largest British fortifications in North America.  Neglected following the end of the French and Indian War, it was later taken by American forces in 1775, and control went back and forth between the two during the war.  It was largely neglected after that until the State of New York took it over as a state park in 1910 and repaired and partially restored some of the ruins.  

Today the entire peninsula is also a wildlife area, and most has been left to return to nature.  I'm not sure what the blue flowers are, I think they might be lupine.  There were also daisies and buttercup and prairie grasses.  It is rather ironically a serene spot now.