Summer has ended rather suddenly this year with storms, rains and cold weather in the early part of September. That is not the way it was in the last years but it does give me time to be in my little studio and paint.
We spent one of the last beautiful afternoons outside.
We went to a small Natural Reserve near the border with Belgium, the "Oude Buisse Heide" near the village of Zundert. This is a nice spot for a walk, we chose a signposted walk of about 4 km and we passed through a lot of different landscapes. I have made several reference photographs for later use and this is the first watercolour painting I have made.
We had been walking in between fields and a part of the heath that gives the Reserve its name. Looking back to where we came from I decided the view was worth a painting and stopped to make several photographs for reference.
The bushes on the left mark the ending of the heath, the fields on the right are grazed by cattle and have an uneven surface with several kinds of grasses, some flowers and small bushes. The path bends to the right and the different fields are separated by lines of wickets that have some higher grasses growing under them. I think the wires between the wickets are under electrical voltage to keep the cattle inside.
We had a cloudy day and most of the time no direct sunshine, so there were no distinct shadows on the path.
Again I have mixed all the green colours in this scene from yellows and blues. This is getting easy as I am having much more experience - and not to mention much more blues and yellows on my palette.
For the grey colours in the sky I have not mixed a grey using blue and brown, this time I used small amounts of Payne's Grey, just to see if that would give a satisfactory result. For this scene it proved to be perfect, so I will certainly do this again.
More information about this painting (size, paper and paints used, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
While I was on painting vacation last summer I had sketched an birch tree and decided that day not to use the sketch for a painting. The sketch and the plans I had for it were still on my to-do list, so I have made the painting.
Maybe not exactly as I had planned in summer, but even now it is not so very different from the kind of painting I wanted to create.
The tree was having all of its foliage in summer but I managed to follow the lines of the major branches for the sketch. Now that I have suggested an autumnal tree, I could make the white branches stand out much more.
For the painting I have made a drawing of the outlines of the tree and the major branches and covered that area with colourless masking fluid. Once that was dry I used water and paint to create the background, the foliage and a suggestion of fallen leaves on the ground. I applied two layers of paint to create more intense colours for both the foliage and the dark background. With all paint dry I removed the masking fluid.
After that I started to fill in the shadows and the markings that are so characteristic for the birch trees. I also applied a third layer of paint on the top part of the foliage and the ends of the branches, suggesting the existence of foliage in front of those branches.
Experimenting like this with water, paint and the suggestion of - in this case a birch tree in autumn - is really nice to do. I have found that these experiments make my 'touch' in the more traditional landscapes a bit more relaxed, especially in the suggestions of the background. So every now and then, when I start to feel stressed about painting bushes and backgrounds I will make a few paintings like this.
And of course when I feel like doing so, because - as I said before - this is fun!
More information about this watercolour painting (size, materials used, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
When I am on the Pier of Hoek van Holland, I do not only look towards the seashore. The Pier is really a long way into the North Sea and at the end of it is a radar post with a helicopter platform which is the only one in The Netherlands (maybe even in the world).
On the left side of the Pier is the canal through which the Port of Rotterdam can be reached, on the right side there are some of the basalt blocks that protect the beach. When I am at this spot I have walked further towards the end of the Pier compared to the spot where I made the sketch for my previous watercolour painting.
For this sketch I really had to imagine the Pier without all the tourists and fishers.
The radar post is the one on the right side of the Pier, on the left side is a light beacon. They both seem to be on the horizon, but the beacon is much closer to the point from where I am sketching.
The waves do often fall over the edges of the Pier, leaving dark wet marks on the concrete.
We were here on a Sunday, so there was some traffic at sea, but not as much as would have been on a weekday. I have suggested only one ship at the horizon. Sometimes even that one ship was not to be seen that day.
The previous painting had a lot of clouds in the sky, but half an hour later those were all gone. There was a strong wind that day, I really could not have painted on the spot if I wanted to do that.
After I got home I looked at my sketch and thought 'Why did I do that?' because it was not a very detailed sketch, a few pencil lines and notes about the colours on white paper.
I decided to paint the scene and make the best of it. Using the right colours for the basalt blocks, the light beacon and of course the sea would bring back the scene that inspired me to make that sketch - I hoped. And that is exactly what happened.
More information about this watercolour painting (size, paper and paint used, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
