And there was light....

 

During the week of painting with teacher Ad van Aart there was a day with a lesson about a 'surprising turn' in a painting or drawing. While looking for inspiration for the work in my previous post I found printed pictures of pages taken from the King James Bible and I wanted to use these in a mixed media work. Of course I discussed my plans with Ad first and we came up with a nice composition.

After cutting out the parts I wanted to use, I glued them to a sheet of watercolour paper with a transparent paste for acrylics and waited for it to dry.

I was inspired by the way these pages were printed, dark below and more light at the top of the pages. 

The part below the pages had to be a dark and unforgiving landscape, the part above the pages was to be much more friendly. The acrylic paste did influence the way my watercolour paint was to be applied to the underground, but in this case it only enhanced the atmosphere I wanted to create.

I was surprised and happy that one of my fellow students wanted to buy this work.

The information about the paper and paints I have used can be found in the link at the 'Galerie' page of my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

City vs Nature

 

During the week of the painting vacation, our teacher Ad van Aart always has some special lessons prepared. This week we were instructed about the 'Surprising turn' or the element of surprise in our paintings and we were free to follow up on the instructions or work on our own projects.

I really like this idea so I went to look for inspiration in some very old magazines Ad brings for occasions like these.

I already was planning to do a City versus Nature work, but the picture of this built up city view was a surprise for me, and I decided to use it. At first I thought to do something with the trees that were everywhere in the area of our residence, but then I found a partial drawing of a lion skull. I looked on the Internet for further information about the shape of the skull and started to work.

The cityscape with lots of different buildings almost on top of each other and lots of colours was painted with watercolour.  I chose not to add the details of washing lines, antennas and power wires because this was to be a background. Our teacher Ad agreed with me on this.

The skull was drawn in with light pencil lines first and then in a dark brown Conté Sketching Crayon, adding layers until I had the image I was looking for.

Of course I used fixative in the end.

Do I need to explain the thoughts and ideas that made me create a work like this? I hope not.

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