The Vacation 3

When I started trying to paint watercolor and pastel, two years ago, I realized that the most study materials I get from Internet: Wet canvas, artists's blogs, "how to" sites. And mostly this info came from Europe and the USA. After all, Russia was deep into socialist realism for 70 years, which was hardly the friend for free spirit of watercolor.

So I jumped deep into all the resources and was happy. I often saw the "workshop" term and wanted so much to try any.
When the dates of my trip to the USA became clear, I googled "watercolor workshop July New York" and was directed to  www.artshow.com and the workshop of Steve and Janet Rogers in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio was chosen. Linda Nye, the art center director was generous to confirm my delayed request and - o-la-la! that's how the dreams come true :-))
Sorry for this long introduction to my "next day on vacation" post..

There was about 450 miles to my point of interest. I decided to drive and to do the trip slowly, to make a stop in the middle of Pennsylvania and look around, listen, watch, smell - you know, I already wrote about my way of touring new places :-))

I chose Lock Haven, PA, small town on the edge of Sproul State forest. Why? It is located in the middle of my route, I named it "Locked Heaven" and wanted to see the details. And I am more "in the woods" person, these three reasons looked fine for me.

Locked heaven is so beautiful and so welcoming. I did not draw (was too tired and overwhelmed with emotions) but I did photos. Please enjoy.



The next day my GPS and I decided to choose small roads, so my trip was 100 miles longer and 100% more beautiful in comparison with Interstate-80 (wide, long and boring (from artist's point of view). I was driving through Elk state forest, watched the 'Beware of elks" road signs and was praying to make the elks to forget about my road that day. They heard me and my road was empty and calm :-)) Pure meditation.