Sweetwater Creek State Park

Sara and I went to a painting class at Sweetwater Creek State Park. It was a very well run park, they have a neat little visitor center. I want to go back and check out all of the trails when it gets a bit warmer.

A small bit of cash and the park provided paint, paper, and scenery. We went to an old civil war era cotton/textile mill. The mill was burned during the war and never rebuilt. They moved the workers to the north and would not allow them to return until after the war. There was nothing to return to, so it might have been for the best. There was a protective fence, but we got to go inside to paint. In the 1970's, some good ol boys would go down there and get drunk and shoot at a wall. None of the bullet damage to the brick was from the civil war.

I made a pencil drawing of this arch that had wood supporting it (which I later found that the wood was only there so that it would not collapse, it was open in civil war times). The water that ran the mill came through the hole in the wall from the arch. Its "backwards" in the sense that I am used to drawing boxes from the outside (perspective is wrong). Although, it would be right if the tree was on the outside, and we pretended that I was sitting outside of the ruins and looking into a mirror.


In the painting, the perspective is correct. Without the black lines, the painting would suck. I should have used darker shades to delimit the objects instead of black, but I suck at mixing paint.

I took some pictures of the scenery, it was a pretty neat place to visit.

And a picture of the ruins, from the outside. The wooden arch is on the left.

We had lunch at the end of a trail, overlooking the "falls" (rapids).
The rest of the day was also awesome, we went to the melting pot for dinner. We were so stuffed that we prompted fell asleep when we got home.