A summer's day

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

I figured I would give you the reader and myself a break from this winter with a late summer scene. Put the snow aside at least for a day!

Last summer the Brattleboro Outing Club had a paddle on Lowell Lake, which is near Londonderry, Vermont. It was a beautiful day on a lovely, clear, clean body of swimmable water with wildlife to boot! We saw a blue heron, an eagle, and painted turtles sunning on a downed limb hovering above the water. There are no year-round homes on the lake, so it generally is quiet and peaceful. We weren't the only paddlers, but all were respectful of the surroundings.

This watercolor is a detail of a study I made and added to recently. It is a tall, narrow, sheet of watercolor paper, a remnant as such from a prior painting that had been kicking around. This photograph cuts off much of the top and some trees but the camera simply could not capture it all, with such narrow proportions. This sheet lends itself to a slice of nature with its vertical orientation, which is what I intended, from the paddler to the sky. I plan at some point on doing a near full sheet of this emphasizing the vertical orientation so that water, vegetation, and sky are all included, but on a more generous scale.