Glade Grist Mill, Babcock State Park, WV

Work In Progress: Glade Creek Grist Mill, Update 1

            I’ve been wanting to paint a snow scene for a long time. There have been two paintings I’ve done that had snow in them, but not as an important part of the subject matter. My painting of “Raine and Megan” has snow as the backdrop and “The Canadian Rockies” shows some snow on the mountainsides. Both of these paintings show snow sort of in passing but not as a major component. I live in sunny Florida, so snow is hard to come by. I have to purposely take a trip looking for snow and snow scenes. And, my wife and I do this. We both miss snow in the winter. Not the kind that stops traffic, airlines and causes accidents, but the recreational kind. The kind that just looks beautiful on the ground and on trees and buildings. So, each winter we take trips further north, into the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, sometimes further, hoping to get some good photos – and just to be in the snow for a time.

When you rent a cabin far in advance, though, you’re taking a chance that there will be fresh snow just when you take that trip. We’ve been fortunate in the past few years hitting it at the right time. We did get some good photos in Lake Lure, NC one year – the year we photographed our granddaughters in six inches of fresh snow. A couple of years we had to travel further north, all the way to Ohio, to find snow at the right time. It helped that we were visiting our son and daughter in law at the time.

On the way back home from Ohio I wanted to stop at Babcock State Park and see the old Gristmill there. The State Park is in Fayette County, West Virginia and Glade Creek Grist Mill is one of the most photographed structures in the country. I was hoping they had a good snowfall there and I could get some good photos for a painting. I wasn’t disappointed. As we drove into the park we seemed to pass into a different world – a fantasy world of snow and ice. Few cars had ventured into the park that weekend, so the snow was nearly pristine. The mill is located just inside the entrance and is near the visitor center. The center itself was closed, so we parked and walked around. It was cold and the snow was six to eight inches deep. Parts of the creek had frozen over. The sun was poking in and out of the clouds, so the sunlight dancing on the snow was beautiful. The scene was more than I could have hoped for. We stayed for an hour or so, soaking in the incredible beauty, and took many photos.

I’ve been holding on to those photos for a year now and I recently took a closer look at them. I decided that now was the right time to paint that scene. I think I’m going to do this one in watercolor. I have many photos of the mill, and I present one here for a preview. Next week I’ll begin discussing considerations and thoughts concerning the painting and I’ll begin the process of building a composition. I hope you’ll follow along as I develop this painting. I’m excited!