Olana, home of Frederic Church

You really do need multiple sketches to properly convey Olana, home of the Hudson River School artist Frederic Church. (I spelled his name incorrectly in my sketchbook, as I just found out!) First of all, the Persian-inspired home is on top of a hill, with views of the Hudson River Valley, the Catskills and four states, on a clear day. It’s best to walk down to a lower level on the property to capture its position on that upper ridge. But if you do that, you have your back to the Hudson, and you need to get that in there too, because the early autumn panorama from the top is quite spectacular too. Once you’ve sketched the distant views, you also need to record the details of the moorish-inspired architecture. I could have completed another spread just of arched windows, inset doors, tiled chimneys, ornate brickwork and stencilled borders but I only had room for a few on my page.

This sketch may not look great if you are looking at it on a phone because I used a double-page spread in my sketchbook, so the final size is quite large: 22″ x 8″. But the location was so grand that I needed a lot of room to really tell the story of the place, and for that I needed both sides of the book.

My students also did some amazing work at Olana. It’s a very welcoming place for artists, as you might imagine. I’ll be teaching again at Hudson Valley Art Workshops next August. If you want to join the group, I’m pretty sure we’ll go back to Olana. We had a really wonderful week with Kim and her team at Greenville Arms, and registration is already open here.