National Parks are all the rage right now, advance reservations just to enter America's National Parks are being required for the most popular. At first my reaction to this was a little sad, however over time I've come to appreciate that this is for the best to preserve those sacred lands. And, I'm even more appreciative that we have a Native American leading our National Parks.
While the joy of standing in these beautiful lands is thrilling and spectacular, I can't help but feel as if I don't want to hasten any decline in quality of our national parks. I've got my 'bucket list' of parks I still want to see-North Cascades, Lassen, Yellowstone, Picture Rocks-it goes on too. For now, I will simply enjoy zooming in with Google Earth and seeing images on the the NPS website.
With those lovely images I can see, these prompt me to paint more landscape style 'bookmarks' on Arches paper. I have a huge lot of Arches remnant papers that were part of a bigger project from my former employer at the art supply company. Most watercolor artists are aware of the pristine quality of this paper, so any remnant big enough to paint on is worth saving.
And I'm not limiting the images I paint to just American parks either. Australia is another country with outstanding and wild national parks. For example, this image is of King George Falls.
This is a remote and incredible dual waterfall that is only accessible by flying or boating to it!
Acadia National Park is also on my bucket list. This is one of the parks requiring advanced reservations, and it's also over 3000 miles from where I live. For now, I will indulge in photos that others have taken and recreate this beautiful place.
