Sunday 26 June 2016

Walking around 'Naardermeer' - 7


The trail around the 'Naardermeer' is about 20 km long so there is a lot of variety in the landscape. 
I have already painted the lakes themselves, a small patch of forest, some marshlands and now I have painted fields with oxen and a very large tree, I think it may be an old oak tree.
The combination of the standing tree, the fallen one and the large animals scattered over the area inspired me to paint this scene. I had to gather some courage because I usually don't include animals in my paintings, so even though we saw this scene very soon after we began our walk, it is the seventh scene I am painting.
It was not really difficult to paint them, it is not easy to make an accurate drawing on the surface of my watercolour paper. 

The sky looks still light, the darker clouds I have painted in my other paintings came in shortly after the moment we were looking at these fields. 

More information about this watercolour and the other paintings I made after our walk around the 'Naardermeer'  can be found at my new website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 


Saturday 18 June 2016

Walking around the 'Naardermeer' - 6


After three paintings with blue, grey and green as most important colours, I wanted to do something different. 
The scene is familiar - a small lake with reeds, some bushes and lots of clouds hanging over but now I decided to transfer that to the Twilight colours. Working like that is a bit more challenging than transferring to black and white - like when I make a charcoal drawing - but I like challenges like that.

The reference picture was taken by my son from a bird watcher's hideout overlooking the small lake called 'Hilversumse Bovenmeent'. As it was getting late in the afternoon, the birdwatchers had already left - as had the birds. 
Still the view was great and worth being painted, especially with those clouds.

More information about this watercolour and the other paintings I made after our walk around the 'Naardermeer' can be found at my new website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Sunday 12 June 2016

Walking around the 'Naardermeer' - 5 an unexpected sight


Only shortly after we walked by the scene I painted with the number 4 we saw a predator hunting. My husband used all he could get out of the camera and made the picture that inspired me to do this painting.
We have been looking at both pictures he could make of the bird but we could not exactly determine the species. We think is is a harrier, but that is just a guess.
Different species of harriers are known to visit or even breed in the area of the Naardermeer so our guess could be right.

The picture is zoomed in a lot so the dark clouds in the background were large. I did pour some diluted paint over my wet paper and let it dry completely. After that I used the resulting pattern to make my clouds. After the clouds were dry I used water-soluble pencils to draw the lines of the railroad's electricity supply and the bird. Using a little bit of water I put emphasis on the bird.
This was a bit of an experiment for me, using both paint and pencils but this technique suited my subject best. 

More information about this painting and the others I made after our walk around the Naardermeer can be found at my new website  www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Monday 6 June 2016

Walking around 'Naardermeer' - 2a


This is a second version I made from a sketch I used earlier and this time I wanted to do a painting on a black background. Using white gouache and my watercolour paint I can create a painting that is very different from a watercolour on a white background. 
Until now I used this technique only for night scenes, with this painting I tried a daylight scene.
I am really pleased with the result. 
The technique is something I still am getting used to, but my experience is growing and problems are solved much more easily than in the first paintings I did this way.

These paintings are not so easy to picture for the purpose of showing them in this blog and other things. The light has to be good enough and my daughter has to be home to make the picture for me, my camera is not up to this task.

More information about this spot along the walk around the 'Naardermeer' is found in the blogpost with the watercolour painting I made earlier.

More information about this painting (paint and paper used, etc) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.tk 

Friday 3 June 2016

Walking around 'Naardermeer' - 4


This is already the fourth scene taken from our walk around the 'Naardermeer'  and there are more reference pictures waiting to be painted.
This spot is at the south eastern part of the area, where in the past years fields have been flooded to keep the water level of the natural reserve as it should be. So there is a lot of water, there are grasses and reeds and trees are only in the distance.
We were walking on a bicycle path so the watery environment did not bother us.
On both sides of the path we saw a lot of waterfowl - with young ones of course, it is springtime.
The springtime also shows in all the shades of green in the grasses and reeds. The distant trees are not having all of their foliage yet, that gives me a nice contrast for my painting.

I took the reference pictures for this painting myself, sometimes it is easier to do that than to try to explain what I want. 

More information about this painting (size, paper and colours used, etc) and the other paintings I made after our walk around the 'Naardermeer' can be found at www.jannekesatelier.tk 

I am planning to show the spots I painted on a map after I finished painting all the scenes I want to paint after this walk. 

Thursday 2 June 2016

Walking around the Naardermeer - 3a now as a charcoal drawing


Sometimes I use a working sketch more than once, I have been showing the results of those experiments before. This time I was inspired to do a charcoal drawing of the last painting I did. The bushes, trees and building are a perfect scene for such an experiment.
The wide, open landscapes with the view over the lakes of the Naardermeer area are not suitable for this approach as there are no great contrasts between dark and light due to the clouded sky.

A charcoal drawing  can give attention to other aspects of the scene compared to a watercolour painting. 
I used this idea to give more detail to the bushes and trees as the watercolour is focusing more on the white blossoms of the hawthorn bushes.
I am really happy with the result of my efforts: making a second version of a scene and having for result a work with a very different feeling to it - both versions are showing something of the way that spot really looked like.

More information about this drawing and the watercolour paintings I made after our walk around the Naardermeer can be found at  www.jannekesatelier.tk