During our short stay in the Northern part of Germany we spent one day visiting the dolmens in that area and making several pictures of these ancient structures.
Most of the dolmens we saw were surrounded by trees, even though there was some open space - sometimes even a fence - around the stones, but I wanted to paint one of these dolmens without the nice springtime mood that these trees were bringing to my pictures. The inspiration to make a painting in a misty autumnal mood came during my painting vacation, but that week was too short to make all the paintings I wanted too.
So I imagined the dolmen standing alone, in an empty area as if the trees are yet to grow and I created a misty autumn day. The sky is grey, but not too dark - we have these days in autumn - and the ground is dark as well, only greys and earth colours.
While painting, I did not look at my reference picture any more (I had used it for my preliminary drawing) and worked from memory, creating dark and light areas on the stones, creating cracks that in reality are not there (yet) and suggesting some kind of structure in the ground the dolmen is standing on. That last bit was the most challenging, as I did not want to introduce any bushes or other greens. Finally I decided on the possibility of a circle around the dolmen and some indications of the small hill it sits on.
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.
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