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.