During our short vacation in Normandy (France) we visited the town of Bayeux, mostly because our vacation home was very close to that medieval town.
We did go to see the Tapestry and the Cathedral and walked back to our car by the river Aure that flows through the town. There are two watermills in Bayeux that are still working.
We did have many nice views during our walk in Bayeux, but this one inspired me to paint.
It is quite a change after what I painted before, to do a scene with all those roofs and buildings, but I wanted to paint the colours of the houses we saw in that part of Normandy.
The roofs of the buildings in Bayeux are grey, the colour of slate. The buildings are made with a yellow stone. Even the cathedral has these colours and in the villages we passed we also saw that this stone was used for houses and farms.
While I was painting this scene I thought I made a wrong choice more than once, because this was not easy. Mostly because the scene is not what I usually paint and also a bit because I was not having ideal painting conditions like I have in my little studio at home.
In short, this was a fight - with myself, the paper, the paint, the subject, etc.
When I was about to give up, my husband said the painting is nice and I should have a rest and a cup of coffee. That helped.
This watercolour painting is not about the architecture of Old Bayeux, but about how it feels to walk there between those yellow stone buildings by the river Aure and I think I managed to paint that - even though it was not easy to do so.
The details about paper and paint, size, availability etc. can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Our short stay in Normandy (France) had one bright sunny day and we used that to walk towards the village of Port-en-Bessin, walk around the small harbour and enjoy the view towards the sea and the coastline.
We could walk on the jetty that shelters the harbour and we had great views, helped by the sunshine. There were no clouds and no fog that day - only a bit in the morning.
We made lots of pictures again and I chose this view towards the west - with the chalk cliffs, the sea and the beach covered with seaweed for a mixed media work.
The underpainting is in different shades of blue watercolour and the cliffs and beach are in watersoluble pencils.
This was another 'experiment' for me, trying out my materials and finding out how I really love to use them. This certainly was fun to do and I will probably do more in this technique - someday.
The details about paper, paint, pencils, size etc can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Last week, in Normandy, we had a vacation home with views on lawns and a golf court, which means lots of grass on all sides. The view on the little church was on the front side of the house, this is the back side.
The first morning I was awake and dressed (it is cold outside in the mornings) in time to make some pictures of the sunrise.
The view is showing the lawns and golf court I mentioned earlier and the apple trees that were everywhere. This is Normandy and there are apple trees wherever you look, to produce all that cider, Pommeau and Calvados for which this region is famous.
I have chosen to make a small size watercolour, just to show the colours of the sunrise and the remainder of the morning fog that could be seen just above the grass and between the trees.
The details about the paper and paint I used, the size and availability can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Last week we (my husband and me) were in Port-en-Bessin, on the coast of Normandy (France). We had found a nice vacation home there and we could see the little church of St Pierre just across the lawn in front of the parking place.
The first evening we were in need of a walk, after two days in the car so we made use of the good weather and walked towards the church, made some (reference) pictures and walked some more streets in the direct surroundings of our vacation home.
We returned after sunset, in the last light of the evening.
There were some nice dark clouds when we were outside and they did give the church and its tower a great background. Because it was really late and the light in the house was not great to paint by (a bit yellowish), I decided to make a charcoal drawing. That does not give any problems with colour matching so the shade of the light did not really matter.
Of course, in broad daylight the church does have a foundation, a churchyard with a fence, a house nearby and some trees behind it, but this evening, with night falling, dark clouds and a hint of fog on the ground there was an air of mystery that I wanted to capture in my drawing.
There are some more pictures of this little church, so maybe one day I will make a more detailed painting.
The details about size, paper, availability and contact information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
October has arrived a few weeks ago and there is a new challenge for the members of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken'. We have to make a work of art with the theme 'Silent night, white splendor' and there are other art groups involved in this challenge too.
Some of the works will be seen in the month of December in museum 'Het Stadhuis' in Nieuwpoort (The Netherlands).
Because I always make something new for a challenge I had to improvise a bit. Winter is not here yet and I had to imagine a snow scene.
For this one I took the watercolour I made on the plein air painting day that was organised last May (by 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken) in the area of Meerkerk (Netherlands).
The water tower may have some snow on its roof and on the ledge below and the row of bushes has got a different colour because they do catch a lot of snow.
The pollard willows have lost their foliage in autumn and the branches do not hold the snow so these trees are dark shapes now in a mostly white landscape.
The theme of the challenge is all about atmosphere - exactly what I want to depict in my paintings and the challenge for me was to find a scenery I had not done as a winter scene before.
There are some more landscapes I can convert to a winter scene, and probably I will paint one or two other watercolours that can be used for the challenge that continues until the end of November.
The details about paper, paint, size and availability of this watercolour can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
In my 'archives' are lots of pictures with mushrooms, all taken during autumnal walks in forest areas all over this part of Europe. Usually we don't go far for our autumn vacations, sometimes The Ardennes (Belgium) sometimes The Eiffel (Germany) and sometimes we go to Normandy (France). Where this group of mushrooms was growing is something I cannot really remember, it could even be very close to my home.
I also do not know the name of the species, most mushrooms are hard to identify from a picture and without large volumes of botanical books.
They are beautiful and that is reason enough to make a picture and to paint them.
I have made a brown background in earth colours and placed the group of mushrooms on that background.
Most of the shapes are defined by negative painting - I have painted the shadows around the hoods and stems of the mushrooms. The hoods were made just a little bit darker than the background, using the same colours in a stronger mixture.
The negative painting technique is one that I do not use very often, but for this painting it was the natural thing to do. The resulting painting is what I hoped it would be.
The details about paper, paints, size and availability can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Now autumn is really here, after a few days with a lot of rain there are also mushrooms everywhere. That gave me the idea to look into my reference pictures again, looking for a nice mushroom to paint or draw. These reference pictures are mostly made by my husband (he holds the camera most of the times we are walking) and I keep them until I get inspired to use one or more of these pictures.
This time I chose a 'false chanterelle' for my model-of-the-day. As usual I had to look in a book about mushrooms to know the name of this one.
On a sheet of paper I made a watercolour under painting, using the earth colours in my palette. For this under painting I have chosen to use study quality paints, one of the reasons for that is they are gathering dust now and that is a waste of good paint. These may not be the best paints but nevertheless they are good quality and can be used for an under painting like this.
The under painting has only one layer of paint, so the pencil work can stand out against it.
For the mushrooms and the grasses I have used Graphitint pencils (by Derwent) and only the mushrooms have had a touch of water, changing the colours a bit and filling up the little wells in the paper. The grasses are a bit ragged now, and that is exactly what I wanted them to be this late in the year. Two of the mushrooms had some lines drawn with a Line Marker, but these do not really stand out much. The difference is visible, but very subtle.
Working on this drawing was fun and I am happy with the result.
The details about the paper and all the colours of watercolour and Graphitint pencils I used can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
