A year can pass so quickly!
Tomorrow it is June, in The Netherlands the month for the promotion of Amateur Art.
One of the ways we promote our art is by the program of 'IkToon', in English 'I show'.
This time two of my watercolour paintings are on display in the windows of our local photography shop and I am very happy to have them there.
The name and address of the shop are:
Foto Schievink, Brederodelaan 17, 3353 GG Papendrecht
This information will also be available on my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
A few weeks ago we were walking a twelve kilometres long signposted walk along 'Landgoed Visdonk', a new area of protected nature near the town of Roosendaal, in The Netherlands.
The first part of this walk passes by the agricultural parts of the estate. We passed by cows, horses, fields with leeks, fields with grass and this one. The field at the right hand side of the dirt road was unevenly planted with very young plants that could be almost anything.
My attention was attracted by the trees, their shadows on the dirt road and the puddles in that road with the reflections of the sky and trees in them.
The road around the puddles was wet and a few shades darker compared to the dry sand.
I have painted the planted field with some more variations in colours, shadows and the shades of green of the little plants than my reference picture was showing. As this field was very uneven in the first place, I have only accentuated it a bit more.
The reference pictures do in fact show a very small part of the planted field, I made sure the tree and the road were clearly visible.
The colours of the sand are still a challenge for me, but I think I did well this time. I am learning which colours to mix to paint that very pale sand by trying again and again. In fact I am using some very dark colours and for this pale sand they are diluted with lots of water to obtain a resulting colour that is almost white.
More information about this watercolour painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
The flower buds I have been drawing have come out of course. (The moment I am writing this, the flowers are all gone and little chestnuts-in-the-making have appeared)
The flowers of my chestnut tree are not the easiest to draw and paint for me, maybe also because I did not climb a ladder to make a close-up picture.
I did want to give it a try so I have made some reference pictures and selected one to work from. I could have chosen one with the flowers nicely back-lit, but that would look very much like my previous drawing and I want to show a bit more of my chestnut tree.
For this drawing I decided to make a watercolour under painting in the colours of the leaves that are fully grown now. With a white pencil I have tried to make the white flowers 'pop out' and that did not work as I hoped it would. So I used white gouache and achieved a result that is much more to my liking.
The leaves are done with different pencils and I have used a line marker for some of the outlines of the leaves, mostly the leaf tips.
This was another experiment getting to know my materials and exercising my drawing skills. I learned that drawing on this paper after I have applied a watercolour under painting is not as easy as drawing on untreated paper. It felt as if the paper 'rejected' some of the pencil marks, especially the watercolour pencils. Maybe I will have better results using a different paper.
More information about this drawing (materials used, size, availability) and the other paintings and drawings I made about my chestnut tree can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
We love to go walking in the beautiful nature of our country (The Netherlands). Most of the nature is made up of small patches of forest, moorland or dunes and there are a few larger areas that are extra protected as Natural Reserves. This time we went to one of the smaller areas called "Huis ter Heide". There is a building that gives the area its name and used to be the 'headquarters' for the rangers that managed the area. Now the building has another function and is no longer accessible for the public.
Our signposted walk passed through the forest part of the area. These walks are not only signposted in the forest itself, but using an app on your mobile phone you get additional information about the special features of that walk. Most of the times the information is about the animals that live in the area or about the history of the place.
A lot of information is given about the policy regarding dead trees. A few decades ago these dead trees would be removed so the walk through the forest would be more pleasant. Nowadays the dead trees are left where they are unless the endanger the visitors. Dead trees give food and shelter to lots of insects and birds and are indispensable for a healthy forest. The 'unpleasantness' of dead trees is now turned to a thing to be explored by inquisitive (young) people.
All these dead trees have light and dark areas, some of them have mosses or lichens, some have the bark partially fallen off. All that is a nice exercise for me, to train my drawing skills.
This time I chose a very dark tree with many curves catching the light or casting shadows - a nice challenge for a charcoal drawing.
The result is as I hoped it would be, so I am really happy with this drawing.
More information (size, materials used, availability, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
This spring I have given myself the challenge to make pictures of the budding of the leaves and flowers of our chestnut tree. The pictures have been made and occasionally I am making drawings or paintings.
This time I have made a drawing using water soluble pencils. I have not used water to make some of the colours stand out because I like the result as it is now.
The moment I made the reference picture for this drawing the leaves were not unfolded completely. The flower buds are a bit larger compared to the previous drawing.
Making pictures is not as easy as it seems, The Netherlands is a country where the wind is always blowing and I am always trying to make a nice close-up showing the leaves and flowers. Of course I get a lot of background in my reference picture, so I have to concentrate on the subject which in this case is a leaf and some of the flower buds.
More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
In a previous post I have mentioned the contest of the magazine "Plaisirs de Peindre" and the fact that when you want to participate in the contest you can download twenty sketches that you are obliged to use for your entry.
One of the sketches was this cute cat, almost looking at me, asking to be painted.
As I do not really trust my drawing skills I traced the sketch using my window - and the sunlight of course. In this way I made an outline of the cat and the branch he is sitting on with a piece of charcoal. I faded these lines and started drawing the cat. Or is it a kitten?
I have used charcoal and some of my Tinted Charcoal Pencils for this one.
The model for the markings was one of my daughter's cats, a very gentle tabby cat.
She renamed him after he became her cat, but he was named Freddy before that. This was the inspiration for the title I gave this drawing.
This drawing was also submitted for the contest, I really hope he has a chance!
More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
The wonderful springtime weather continues, so we went for a nice long (signposted) walk on a small estate that is now managed with the meaning to protect the nature.
The signposted walk started in an agriculture area, so we passed by fields with cows, fields with leeks, fields with horses, ...
After a while we came to a forest area with patches of moorland.
One of those open areas in the forest had this dead tree trunk standing in the middle. This dead tree had mosses and lichen growing on the trunk and the colours were really nice.
So I made a few reference pictures and we walked on.
While making the pictures I had already planned to make a drawing using my Graphitint and watercolour pencils. I have only used water on the trees in the foreground to make them more visible against the background.
I really like this subject - a dead tree trunk in its surroundings. This is a nice subject to develop my drawing skills and to experiment with the pencils I have bought in the past years.
More information about this pencil drawing can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
One of the magazines I have subscribed to, "Plaisirs de Peindre" is celebrating its 20th birthday with a contest for all subscribers. At the cost of a small fee we can download twenty sketches that were published before in the magazine. One of those sketches has to be the inspiration for a work of art. Each sketch already has an example of a painting that has been made and published in the magazine.
Amongst a lot of still life and flowery sketches this little landscape attracted my attention.
Being free to 'translate' the initial sketch to an artwork of my own I decided on a winter scene using only three colours.
The final date for submission is past, so now I am publishing my work. (Of course I did submit in time!)
The contest goes on, the next issue will hold the same call for entries, only there will be different sketches available to paint or draw our works of art. I am really looking forward to that!
More information about this painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
