Two weeks ago my husband went to a congress in the South of France and he travelled there by high speed train. Along the route he saw lots of snow and made a lot of pictures from the train, for himself and for my paintings.
The pictures are of an unexpected good quality considered that the train travelled at a speed of 300 kilometres per hour.
The first snow scene, in my previous post, was completed before he was home again. Now I have seen all the pictures he made and I asked for some to be transferred to my laptop computer so I could use them as reference pictures. (very often my husband needs the desktop computer, both for his work and the charity work he does)
This snowy scene is a bit different, the trees are much closer to the railroad and the snow really needs all the shadows I painted to achieve the depth that was needed in this scene.
These scenes are a nice challenge to paint, snow is not completely white, certainly not when the landscape is uneven.
I enjoyed painting this one and the details about paper and paint used, size etc, can be found on my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Our regional amateur art association 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' has a challenge each month during this year, only for October and November the challenges are combined.
I had already painted an imaginary snow scene in October and I wanted to paint another one in November.
My husband has been to a Congress in the South of France this weekend and he sent me a picture of a real snow scene - probably from the train. So I did not have to imagine a snow scene, I had a real one for this painting.
This is a small size painting again, because this special challenge has limits to the size of our artwork. The artworks that are submitted in this challenge will be on display in a small museum in Nieuwpoort (Netherlands) in December, so they cannot be very large.
I have enjoyed painting this one, even though snow scenes can be challenging.
The details about paper and paint used, size etc can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
First of all: the reference picture for this watercolour was made (for me) by Yvonne Koningen and I am really happy that she allowed me to use it.
In our country it's Autumn and the Von Gimborn Arboretum (Tree Museum) is beautiful now. I have seen some of the pictures that were made there last week and I envy those that go there often.
Most of the red leaves of this tree - I think a maple tree - are still on the branches so it looks like there are large red clouds in the reference picture with some leaf ends pointing out.
I was inspired by the colour of the leaves, almost a fiery red against a grayish background and the dark colour of the branches.
I have tried to paint these 'red clouds' and to create a point of interest with some more detailed leaves. This was a bit of a struggle, because the colour values of the red 'clouds' and the blue background were very close. The groups of leaves really were almost clouds so I had to do something. The solution was easy, the darkness of the branches was strengthened a bit to create the darkest colour of the painting and to create a sense of movement from the bottom left to the top corner right.
It has been a long time since I have painted on a half sheet (most of my paintings since summer were on 1/4 sheet or smaller) and maybe that explains a part of my struggle. The fact that I do not show most details of the leaves now - as I have done in almost every painting I made since last summer - was a change as well.
I write this short after I have finished my watercolour painting and I am still not completely happy with it, it's different from what I had in mind. But I am sure tomorrow it will look better, after I have been away from it for a while.
The details about paper and paint used, availability and contact information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
During our walk in Bayeux (France) we passed by a nice bush with a few red leaves left on it, blue berries and some very red branches. All those branches were tangled but I did like the colours and made a reference picture.
The bush was growing over a low wall and the background of my reference picture is the water of the river Aure that flows though Bayeux.
I have no idea of the name of this plant, usually the names of plants are easy to find, but this is a mystery.
My reference picture was cropped to select the section I wanted to paint.
This was done mostly to find a nice section without leaves that belong to other plants that grow nearby. And of course I have made a background that would not distract the attention from my subject.
The details about paper and paint used, size, availability and contact information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
