A Beginner Artist’s Watercolor Study of Old Rag Mountain
Old Rag has been part of my trail story for a while. I first experienced it as a hiker, spending hours climbing, scrambling over rocks, and squeezing through boulders, and eventually standing at the summit, looking out over Shenandoah National Park. It was challenging, occasionally intimidating, and absolutely worth doing.
Like I often do when I’m outside, I took plenty of photographs along the way. One of them captured Old Rag from a completely different perspective than the one I experienced while scrambling across it: the mountain rising beyond an open field, its rocky summit sitting beneath a huge, cloudy Blue Ridge sky.
That photograph eventually made its way back to me as an art reference. I wasn’t trying to create a perfect representation of Old Rag or make some grand landscape painting. I’m still a beginner with watercolor, and I simply wanted to see what would happen if I painted it.
That little experiment eventually became the artwork at the center of Trail Side Post Edition No. 005.
From Hiking Old Rag to Painting It
There’s something interesting about revisiting a place through artwork after you’ve physically experienced it. When I think about hiking Old Rag, I remember the scramble, the rocks, the effort of getting through some sections, and the incredible views once I finally reached the top.
The photograph feels much quieter.
From this perspective, Old Rag sits beyond the field with layers of trees and foothills leading toward the mountain. The rocky summit that felt enormous while I was standing on it becomes part of the larger Blue Ridge landscape. There’s also that dramatic Virginia sky overhead, with heavy clouds mixed with patches of blue.
It was that whole scene, rather than any individual detail, that made me want to paint it.
I didn’t sit down thinking about how I needed to break the landscape into shapes or follow a particular watercolor formula. That simply isn’t how my brain approaches creating. I had the photograph in front of me, my watercolor supplies nearby, and I started painting.
Learning Watercolor Through Play
My process for this painting was pretty straightforward: I layered colors and played.
I added darker colors to the mountain, worked greens into the landscape, went back into areas that needed more depth, and kept building from there. Some places grew darker and moodier, while the field remained much brighter. I played with pale washes in the sky and let the watercolor do some of what watercolor naturally does.
There wasn’t a detailed plan behind it, and I think that was part of what made the experience enjoyable.
I spend a lot of my creative time working digitally, where I can resize, move, recolor, undo, duplicate, or fiddle with it until the cows come home. Watercolor doesn’t give me quite that same level of control. Once the paint and water hit the paper, I have to work with what happens next.
As a beginner, that could easily become frustrating, but I’m finding that I actually enjoy the experimentation. I can add another layer, see what happens when colors meet, decide an area needs to be darker, or simply leave something alone because I like what the paint did on its own.
For this painting, there wasn’t one particular technique that suddenly made everything work. It developed slowly through those layers.
Painting a Place I Already Knew
What I enjoyed most about painting Old Rag was having a connection to the place before I ever picked up the brush.
I wasn’t working from a random landscape photograph I found somewhere. I had stood on that mountain. I knew what it felt like to work my way through the rock scramble, wonder what exactly I had gotten myself into, accept help from strangers through some of the harder sections, and finally reach those incredible views.
The photograph captured one version of Old Rag, while my memory held another.
The watercolor sits somewhere between the two.
I wasn’t trying to document the mountain exactly as the camera had captured it. I was painting from the photograph, but I was also allowing myself to interpret it through color and layers without worrying about whether every detail was correct.
That freedom is becoming one of the things I enjoy most about being new to watercolor. I don’t have decades of rules or habits attached to the medium. Right now, I get to experiment with it.
Letting Myself Be a Beginner
One of the harder parts of learning another creative medium is resisting the expectation that because I’m already an artist, I should automatically know what I’m doing.
Skills transfer, of course, but watercolor is still watercolor. It behaves differently from pyrography, drawing, digital illustration, or surface pattern design, and there are plenty of things I’m still figuring out.
Instead of waiting until I’m technically better before sharing the work, I’m letting these paintings be part of the story.
This Old Rag watercolor is a study. It’s an experiment. It’s me learning what happens when I keep layering color, step back, decide something needs a little more, and put the brush back on the paper. And I like where it ended up.
From Watercolor Study to Trail Side Post No. 005
That connection is ultimately why I chose this painting for Trail Side Post Edition No. 005.
Trail Side Post has always been about taking what I notice and experience outside and carrying some small piece of it back into the studio. Sometimes that begins with a wildflower, an animal, a mushroom, or something I notice along the trail. This time, it began with an entire mountain.
Old Rag traveled from a hike to a photograph, from the photograph to my watercolor paper, and now from my studio into the next Trail Side Post collection. I love that progression because it represents what Wild Ridge Studio is becoming more and more: a record of the places I go, the things I notice, and what happens when I bring those experiences back to the drawing table.
And not everything has to become art immediately. Sometimes a photograph can sit around for a long time before it sparks something. Sometimes I draw dozens of motifs from an experience. Sometimes I paint one mountain just because I feel like seeing what happens.
Old Rag Is Coming to Your Mailbox
Trail Side Post Edition No. 005 will feature my Old Rag watercolor along with coordinating pieces inspired by the mountain and the experience of spending time in the Blue Ridge.
Trail Side Post is my monthly snail-mail collection centered on nature, trails, wildlife, and the things I encounter outdoors. Each edition brings those observations into the studio and turns them into a small collection you can hold onto, rather than something that disappears into a social media feed five minutes after you see it.
For No. 005, we’re heading to Old Rag.
If you’d like to collect this edition, you can join Trail Side Post while No. 005 is available and have a little piece of the Blue Ridge make its way from my trail to my studio to your mailbox.
