Rose - pencil drawing

Last weekend I was part of the 'Af en Toe Kunstroute', an Art route not far from my home. Showing my art to visitors, talking to other artists and making a drawing was what I did that day. The weather was great, we had over 60 visitors at my location.

Just sitting for over six hours is not what I like to do, so I made several reference pictures of one of the flowers of the climbing red rose in my garden. Pencil drawing is relatively clean (no need to wash my hands every fifteen minutes or more often) and I can put it down, talk to visitors of the Art route and pick it up where I stopped without getting in any kind of trouble.  I selected some paper and pencils and packed these with the art I wanted to show. 

For the drawing I used the first two reference pictures, the flower bud still closed and the same flower bud opening a little bit. I took my time - there was no hurry at all - and after I had finished the two flowers I decided to add some leaves that were not to be as detailed as the flowers - just to suggest a background. 

In reality these leaves are there and many more, but this drawing just needed the ones I added to make sure the rose buds/flower are my subject.

The other reference pictures (the flower is completely opened now) will probably be used in later drawings.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of the drawing and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog. If you are interested in my art, please do contact me.

Moving house - for a challenge

 

The May challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' is about moving house. May traditionally was the month to move house (I did not know that and I think I rarely did move house in May) so that's why we have this theme.

That theme is a bit out of my comfort zone, so first I thought of boxes - but within days after the challenge was announced paintings and drawings with boxes were submitted, so I had to think of something else.

This is a bit 'the story of my life' as I used a print of the map of The Netherlands to point the places where I lived and made small drawings of what happened there. Of course I did not draw everything, things should still be visible.

1 is Venlo, I was born there, but did not live there very long. My father got a job far away so we moved to Zwijndrecht, where we lived in three different homes (2, 3 and 4). I grew up there, played and went to school. 5 is Spijkenisse, another change because of my father's work. I got my diplomas for the secondary school and my professional training there. 6 is Hilversum, 7 and 8 are Amsterdam. There I moved for my own job. I married my husband and the children were born in home no. 8 as well and after that in got too small we moved to our first bought home (the others were rental) in Zaandam, no. 9. Finally, 10 is Papendrecht where we moved for my husband's job and we still live here. I discovered my passion for watercolour painting and drawing here.

That was not really much about my submission for the challenge, but a bit of information about me. Of course there is much more to tell 'about me' but I am a painter, not a novelist. So for this time you will have to do with what I wrote about moving house in my life.

Kalmthoutse Heide - moorland

 

A few months ago we (my husband and me) went for a walk on the Kalmthoutse Heide, a Natural Reserve we like to visit as often as possible. This time I made reference pictures of the small peat bog opposite the 'Putse Moer', a large moorland pool and very easy to find on the maps of the area.

As usual I needed some time to gather courage for a painting, because this is not an easy subject for me. All those tall grasses - do I have to paint them all or just a few - and which ones need to be in the painting? 

Also as usual I just had to start painting and these questions answered themselves and I just have to do what looks right when most of the paint is on the paper. The tall grasses I added in the foreground and in the middle ground are not really painted, I used water soluble pencils.

Before all that I also decided on the cropping of the reference picture, what to do with the horizon (the trees on the horizon are 'replanted' for the painting) and my point of interest. These choices were not the ones that I need to gather courage for, so I made them after I chose the reference picture I wanted to use for this work.

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

Delft - Market place

 

Due to the Vermeer exhibition in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam there is another Vermeer-themed exhibition in Delft. This one is very interesting as it gives the background information about Delft in Vermeer's time. 

After we had visited the museum, we walked through Delft and had a drink (tea and coffee) on the Market place with a view on the 'Nieuwe Kerk', another church (Maria van Jesse kerk) and some of the restaurants that are there. And trees!

The trees were just getting their foliage, so the colours were between a reddish brown, yellow and green and I really like the time of the year when trees are not only green. Making reference pictures was done quickly (the tea was still hot) but then...

Painting a lot of architecture makes me unhappy, I never can get all those straight lines as they ought to be in a painting - which is not as straight as they are in the reference picture.

So I made a pencil drawing of the buildings, added sky, foreground and trees with watercolour and used two line markers to re-draw the buildings, going over the pencil lines in many places and adding some shadows where the painting needed it. Using line markers on watercolour paper does not result in very straight lines, so this is what I wanted to do.

The result is even better than I hoped for, so I hope that now I have found 'my way' of dealing with architecture in a watercolour painting.

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

If you are interested in my work, please contact me.