By the water

 

Last summer, during my painting vacation, we visited the 'Afferdense en Deetse Waarden' for inspiration, as there was not much variation in the surroundings of the holiday farm where we were staying.

This beautiful area is designed to prevent flooding when there is a lot of water in the river Waal. There are secondary channels for the river and the moment we were there, these were still full after the heavy rains of a few weeks earlier. The fact that we could walk there on dry paths was proof of the effectiveness of these constructions.

In the area were several dead trees still standing, probably because they were in the water for a few years now and simply could not survive that. This is a common sight in areas that are redesigned to store the water after heavy rains to help prevent the flooding of villages.

I have been sketching there and making reference pictures for a few hours and of course there were more sketches and pictures than I could use that week. Some sketches were already used but others had to wait.

This view over one of the secondary channels from a small bridge has been waiting in my sketchbook for months now and it was time I started using my sketch for a painting. The sketch was made in summer, when the view was in shades of blue and green but I wanted to change that colour scheme. The easiest way is to 'change the season' and this time I changed to winter.

My colour scheme is blue and brown now and the dead trees are a more important part of my composition. It is hard to paint the fast flowing water from under the bridge that was my standing point, but I have tried to recall this as good as possible and paint from my memory as well as from the reference picture I made.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this painting and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Dead branch - oil pastel

 

Over a month ago, just before our Christmas vacation, our country (The Netherlands) got in lockdown again. Not much of a problem, but I had waited for those weeks off to go and shop in my favourite art supply store. So I ordered online and with the order came a free set of oil pastels. Not the most expensive quality, but still it is something new to me and I want to explore the possibilities.

After watching several 'How to draw with Oil Pastel' videos on the internet I gathered courage for my first experiment - since I left school of course but that is a long time ago.

The dead branch, that was a subject for a pencil study a few weeks ago was a nice subject for this. I am familiar with the subject and it's one that needs layering colours for mixing and placing different colours next to one another. 

For this first experiment I did not use the black that is in the box, but tried to mix the shadow colour with brown and blue, as I do with my watercolours. Also the colours of the branch are layered, mixed (with my finger) and more layers added. The layering itself is also a way of mixing the colours. For the background I mixed only by layering and added some shapes of dead leaves. The grasses were made with a sgraffito technique using a small wooden skewer. I learned that I have to prepare this, for making all the grasses stand out the bottom layer should be a very light colour.

I learned a lot from this first experiment. As there are more colours in the box, I will certainly make more of these drawings, if only because it is fun to do.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this drawing and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

(Not a) selfie

 

The January challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' is "Selfie" inspired by the many self-portraits of the great painters and the many self-portraits made with the smartphones nowadays. We are challenged to make some kind of self-portrait this month.

As I am not a portrait painter, I do not even paint people if I can avoid it - most of the times I can avoid it - I had to come up with an idea. A few weeks ago we were at our North Sea coast and I made some reference pictures of the coastline with waves, wet sand and water. My husband made some pictures of me, while I was squatting for the best viewpoint. I have used one of these paintings for the challenge.

On my paper I did first draw the outline of myself before starting to paint. The water, the waves and the sand were painted and after that I mixed some shades of grey from Sepia and Indigo for my figure. I painted the coat, the phone, my glasses and my grey trousers. For my hands, face and hair I mixed a lighter grey with Cobalt Blue and Sepia. Shapes are only very slightly suggested, my first plan was to paint a monochromatic dark silhouette, but that would not have worked. So I changed my plan to create a better painting.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this watercolour painting and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Birch trees - winter

 

Last week we were walking in the beautiful forest area near Rucphen and of course I made some reference pictures for painting and drawing. Trees are a favourite subject, dead or alive and this time I decided to make pictures of a group of birch trees standing with dead grasses and fallen leaves all around them - it's winter so that is no surprise.

In the background is a group of pine trees providing a nice dark contrasting area for the white birch trees. At the moment I made the picture there was a lot of blue in the sky with some gentle looking clouds and I liked that very well.

I did not mask the trees, painting around them may be a bit more work, but working in this way gives me the freedom to use my hair dryer to speed the drying process of my watercolour painting. Today the hair dryer was necessary as the days are short in winter and I prefer to paint in daylight. The painting was finished before it got too dark and I even had time to make the picture that I show in this blog post.

Birch trees are not often my subject of choice, maybe because they seem to be a 'classic' subject in tree paintings, but as I love to paint trees, I must not avoid these. I am happy with the result of my work.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of the painting and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Dead branch - pencil study

We still have our Christmas Vacation, my husband and me both work in schools now. So we went for a walk in a forest area near Rucphen, where we had walked before. The walk was nice and being there in wintertime made it different from the previous time we made that specific signposted walk.

Lying close to the path were several dead branches, already stripped of their bark by - the animals, the weather, time or.. 

What I noticed were the colours of the bare wood that were showing. It had rained a bit the day before, so the moist conditions helped a lot but still, there were shades of yellow, some orange-red, greens and shades of brown. All that was inviting me to make reference pictures and make a (watercolour) pencil drawing showing as much of these rich colours as possible. Of course the reference pictures were not perfect, but I have used my memory as well.

 Using the pencils, I have layered and mixed colours until the shade I remembered was on the paper, adding the small bits of bark on the branch, some holes and the very small mushrooms near the middle of the branch. The branch was lying amidst dead leaves and some grasses. The leaves are only suggested by colour variations in the background and the grasses are 'drawn' with my eraser, trying the effectiveness of that technique.

While making this work I have learned a lot so the 'study' idea worked as it should. The result is even better than I hoped for at some point in the process.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this drawing and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

 

 

Dune Valley - Hoek van Holland

 

During the wintertime we always go for a walk in the dunes along our coast and often we combine that with a short walk by the shoreline. This time we went for a walk in the Dunes of Hoek van Holland where a short walk was recommended. The walk is not signposted, but with a map it is easy to complete the walk without getting lost.

In the beginning of this walk we passed by a small dune valley and I made a reference picture without my own shadow - which was not really easy at that time - and I used that picture for a watercolour painting.

I was inspired by the small path and the line of the dunes in the background. There are several rows of dunes with small bushes but in winter, when all the bushes are equally dark, these are hard to differentiate. Only the sunlight on the smaller branches shows the structure of the dunes and bushes in the background.

The foreground does not only have the small animal path, but also some patches of grasses that all turned to a straw colour now it is winter. I have painted the dark and light patches of the foreground and have not tried to indicate the grasses as that would be too much detail. What I wanted to paint is the atmosphere of this small dune valley and the result of my work pleases me.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this watercolour painting and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.