The weather in The Netherlands can be challenging. Today we planned a day of plein-air painting in the beautiful landscape of the 'Alblasserwaard' (where I live) and every time I set up my field easel it really started to rain a little. After a few attempts I gave up completely and went home. Another member of the group also gave up and most of the others were still inside the restaurant talking. Of course the sun started to shine and the rain stopped completely after I started painting in my studio.
If we had stayed on the spot, my painting probably would have been an interesting experiment in wet-on-very wet painting. Of course I was also getting wet and I quickly lost the inspiration needed for such an experiment.
The title is all about the July challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken', the regional amateur art association of which I am a member. The coincidence that our day of plein-air painting had exact the kind of weather that we had to depict for the challenge made me decide to submit this painting.
The landscape is imaginary, but based on a scene near the restaurant where our group planned to meet. In the middle of the 'polder' so there are fields, paths, trees, bushes and several ditches. There were some windmills at walking distance (even with my painting stuff to transport) and cows and sheep were visible from our standing point.
I decided to paint a scene with a tree (no surprise here), some fields and the dark clouds that were over the landscape all morning. Because my paper had been wet from the rain, I had a bit of a struggle to get my dark shades in place but in my studio I can speed up the drying process when needed so this turned out the way I wanted it.
More information about this painting (materials used, size, availability, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
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