Snow - charcoal drawing

 

Last week we had a lot of snow, but it has been melting away because of higher temperatures. Last night and today it is freezing again, so what was left remains in its place today.

There is snow left on fields and I wanted to make a charcoal drawing of that last snow. So we went out to see a field that was still mostly white.

Very close to our home we found a nice spot for my reference picture. 

Today the sky is almost as white as the snow so the trees and their reflection in the water have the darkest colours. There is grass visible where snow has already disappeared and there is a trail of footprints - probably made by the moorhens that live here.

The result shas the atmosphere of (last) snow I wanted to capture so I am happy with this drawing.

The information about the materials I have used, the size and availability of this work and - if you are interested in m y original artwork - my contact information can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Garden lamp in the snow - a drawing

 

This week we had snow - we still have a lot of snow lying in the garden, on the streets etc. The garden looks beautiful and two of the garden lamps look really 'brave' in this snow. (the other lamps are higher and are not buried in the snow)

Of course I wanted to draw this and I used graphite pencils and a fine liner for the lamp structure for this drawing. This turned out really nice and I enjoyed working on the drawing.

The information about the materials I have used, the size and availability of this work and - if you are interested in my original artwork - my contact information can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Snow - a pencil drawing

 

For the prompt 'Snow' I did not have to search for inspiration. My new coloured paper with the Graphitint Pencils should be a nice experiment.

Like the drawings made with my watercolour pencils I first made a layer of pencil, applied some water to 'awaken' the colours and worked on that with a second layer of pencil.

The Graphitint pencils have an extra: using water makes them change colour a bit. That is a nice base to work on with the dry colour for extra depth.

The result is what I hoped for in this small drawing.

The information about the materials I have used, the size and availability of this drawing and - if you are interested in my original artwork - my contact information can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Snow fantasy

 

The special offers for discounts when ordering cards are coming in, so I had to make my Christmas card!

This year it will be a landscape and the reference is a sketch I made many years ago and changed to a winter scene, adding some hills and forgetting the path while painting.

The colour scheme is simple, only dark, moody colours for a nice winter's night in the hills - all very imaginary but really fun to paint.

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

In the middle of the winter night - white on black

 

The December challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' our regional Amateur Art association has the title of a Christmas song: In the middle of the winter night.

This does not mean we have to create a Christmas painting, lots of things happen in winter nights so we are free to find our inspiration where we like it. My husband Peter has made some nice snow pictures several years ago in our own garden. In the night and the snow does really suggest winter.

So using these pictures as my references I decided to make a 'white on black' painting, using white Gouache and some watercolour paints to create the image. 

As I have described before, the black cardboard is really heavy compared to my usual watercolour paper and of course it does react differently to paint and water. The challenge of that is a nice one as I have experienced it many times before. Lots of layers of white paint are needed to get the snow covering the bird feeder and the snow on the ground, but the change is fun and welcome.

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

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

First snow

 

The weekly 'Lockdown challenge' continues and this week's theme is 'snow', inspired by the snow that had fallen in the United Kingdom last week.

We did not have any snow last week, but two weeks earlier there was a little bit of snow, only during the night and my husband quickly made some pictures of our cars covered with snow. The next morning it was already gone.

Other parts of The Netherlands did get more snow over the last weeks, but we live surrounded by large amounts of water and close to the North Sea, so the temperature does not drop so easily to freezing temperatures for the whole day. 

Because of this, I could not paint a nice snow-covered landscape from a recent picture and I decided to challenge myself by painting my car, covered with some snow.  

The children that live in our street had already been gathering snow from the hood for throwing snowballs but the window and the roof were yet untouched. It was a night picture, so there was not much to be seen of the parking place and the plants and fence behind my little car. As the snow and my car are my subjects, I have added an imaginary background, suggesting a fence.

My car is really new, I got it last December and I have added the characters and numbers of the plate to make clear that I have tried to paint my own little car. This is the first time that I have painted a car and I am not unhappy with the results, given the not-so-perfect reference picture (colours, shadows and perspective were not ideal).

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

Snow along the route

Two weeks ago my husband went to a congress in the South of France and he travelled there by high speed train. Along the route he saw lots of snow and made a lot of pictures from the train, for himself and for my paintings.
The pictures are of an unexpected good quality considered that the train travelled at a speed of 300 kilometres per hour.

The first snow scene, in my previous post, was completed before he was home again. Now I have seen all the pictures he made and I asked for some to be transferred to my laptop computer so I could use them as reference pictures. (very often my husband needs the desktop computer, both for his work and the charity work he does)


This snowy scene is a bit different, the trees are much closer to the railroad and the snow really needs all the shadows I painted to achieve the depth that was needed in this scene.

These scenes are a nice challenge to paint, snow is not completely white, certainly not when the landscape is uneven. 

I enjoyed painting this one and the details about paper and paint used, size etc, can be found on my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com

Chapel, another winter fantasy

Another watercolour painting with the little chapel we saw close to Reifferscheid (Germany) in an imaginary landscape.
This time a snow scene with a warm feeling to it, like one of those days with sunshine and some clouds. The winter sun is low, so its light is really almost gold in these days.
The inspiration for the colours I have chosen comes from a step-by-step demonstration in one of the magazines I subscribed to. I decided to try this combination - as far as I have the colours that are used in the demonstration in my own palette. There is a small difference, but that does not matter for the result.

I have changed the location of the chapel, now it is a bit hidden behind a line of bushes and some snow. 
The winter trees are added and there is another hilltop behind the little chapel. 

The shadows on the snow, indicating uneven spots hidden underneath are a bit experimental, I still have to learn how to do this. We do not often have that much snow in The Netherlands so I cannot really work from observation. Once again I have looked at some tutorials for guidelines.

More information about this watercolour painting (materials used, size, contact information, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Winter evening

When I was browsing through my reference pictures looking for inspiration I found this scene. The picture was taken years ago and I could not exactly find who had taken it, probably my daughter. It was one of a series of snow pictures given to me for inspiration a long time ago, so I can use it as I wish.

The scene is not very far from our house. 
We regularly take a walk around the quarter where we live and in the winter - with snow - the most beautiful spot of the walk looks like this. 
The lights are the lanterns illuminating the highway close by. There is a screen (to block most of the noise so houses have been built nearby) which is visible in winter, when the trees and bushes are bare and the herbs are sleeping in the soil. 

Sunset is early in December and the picture was taken just after the sun had disappeared. 

I used some of my Twilight Colours again, combined with a yellow and an orange for the lantern lights.

More information about this watercolour painting (size, colours used, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Another snowscape - still the Veluwe

My inspiration still works overtime and the fact that I recently bought a book about Winterlandscape painting in the nineteenth century in The Netherlands really helps me find new ways to paint a landscape with trees.
So, inspired by the old masters I transformed an autumnal landscape into a snowscape again, now in warmer colours. The landscape is still found in a small part of our National Reserve The Veluwe; the Renderklippen.
The reference photo was made by my husband Peter.
More information about this watercolour (colours used, size, etc.) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr

Veluwe - now as a snowscape

I am still experimenting with the possibilities of my new set of Twilight Colours.
This time - inspired by all the snowscapes that are appearing on fb this time of the year - I decided to transform an autumn landscape into a snowscape. In fact that is not so very difficult; you just need another set of colours, a bit of salt and some patience.
My first plan was to make the ground dark with a few white patches and so I started out making the sky, bushes , trees and the falling snow and left the painting to dry completely. When I stepped back I decided to change that plan and make the ground white with a few dark patches and some shadows. It really didn't need much more than a few carefully placed touches.

As reference  I used a picture my husband Peter made for me when we were walking in the Renderklippen (the Veluwe) last October.

More information about this painting (size, colours used, etc.) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr