Sallandse Heuvelrug - Coniferous trees in backlight

 

  

This time of the year, the sun is not as high in the sky as it is in summer, so it is possible to make a picture of a tree in backlight early in the afternoon. My husband Peter was inspired by the scene and made several pictures - that inspired me to paint. Of course my watercolour painting is not meant to be an exact copy of the beautiful pictures my husband made.

The reference pictures were made during one of our walks in the Natural reserve 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' in the eastern part of our country.

The picture I made from my watercolour painting is not perfect, in this season it is really  hard to get the colours right. The picture does give a good impression though and maybe the one I uploaded to my Flickr page is a bit better. 

For this painting I chose a large size paper so I had all the space I needed for a nice clouded sky, a landscape with moorland, woodland in the background and the trees of course.

The picture I used for reference had the sun exactly behind the trees, so there was as good as nothing of the needles and branches 'lost' in the light. The moorland is very dark in the picture because of it being in backlight, I wanted to change that to how the landscape looks when you see it with your own eyes.

I did use brighter colours for the sky and landscape than the reference picture had, the trees are painted in very dark colours, as close to black as I could mix them.

The result of my efforts is what I hoped for, a watercolour that suggests the atmosphere of a sunny autumn day in a beautiful landscape.

The information about the paper and paints I have used, the size of this work and its availability can all be found in the link at the 'Galerie' page of my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com