'Sallandse Heuvelrug' The sheepfold - a charcoal drawing

Most of the Natural Reserve 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' is heath, and where you find heath, there are sheep. Therefore we were not surprised that one of the trails we followed came by a sheepfold. In winter it is closed to the public, so we walked by and my son Martijn made some pictures for me, so I could gather courage again and paint or draw a building among trees.
That is something I like to do, for these older buildings are really picturesque in their own way but I really have to practice this kind of subject a lot.
When I make a watercolour painting after a scene like this the dark colours of the building always trouble me. For this drawing, I made the sheepfold not as black as it is in reality. This enables me to show the shapes and angles of the building.

This is a scene in winter, that makes the trees easier and we had foggy weather, so everything was dark because of the moist and there are no shadows. 
At this point, somewhere in between the trees, the fog was not as dense as it was in the open areas.

The sheepfold is protected by some woodland and the reference pictures were taken from the path we were following. More to the right (not pictured) and to the back were some meadows and directly next to the building is a path of fine stone chippings.

I liked doing this. Charcoal is nice to work with - if you don't mind black fingers - and sometimes you are challenged by the same problems that you have to face when working on a watercolour painting. 

More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Broekpolder in winter - monochromatic version

As I have told before, sometimes I like to make a second version of a painting. 
This time I wanted to do a monochromatic version, using - and exploring the possibilities of - Payne's Grey.
Last year I decided to explore the materials and colours that i have gathered over the years and this is one of those experiments.
I used the same reference from the Broekpolder that I painted from just one day earlier.
The composition and the problems I faced were fresh in my mind so the colour was my only challenge.
Payne's Grey is made up with more than one pigment, so I tried to use that.
This is a much smaller painting than the coloured one, only a quarter of that size.
When I look at both paintings, I cannot say which one I prefer, they have both strong points and weaker points. 
This monochromatic painting does not represent the sunset very well, the wintery feeling is stronger here.

More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Broekpolder in winter

We did have some nice weather this winter. Around Christmas we visited my mother-in-law and went for a walk in the 'Broekpolder'. This is an area of wet nature between Vlaardingen and Maassluis, used for water storage in times of heavy rains and recreation in all times. 

It was a cold day but we had not much wind and enough sunshine to keep us warm. As the days are short around Christmas, the sun was setting by the time we finished our walk.

The area is really nice, there are children's playgrounds near the parking lots and the hiking paths are well kept. It would be nice to visit this area in summer, when all is green.

I made some reference pictures with the setting sun and the clouds and this is the first painting I made after those references.

This was not easy, the lower clouds have a yellow lining instead of the usual white and some of them are really dark, all because of the sun that is setting behind them.

I had to avoid mixing the blue and yellow colours of the sky and add the clouds carefully in order to keep my grey mixture together.

I usually mix grey clouds from French Ultramarine and a brown - depending on the season - and on wet paper the blue granulates nicely, but the brown colour tends to flow a bit more. So if I am not careful I will end up with blue clouds that have a brown lining.

The yellow colour of the sky is reflected in the water, as are the clouds. A bit of wind makes the reflections blurry.

In the water are the remains of some trees and bushes. Now the water level is high, they are drowned and will eventually disappear.

More information about this watercolour painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

'Sallandse Heuvelrug' - at the woodlands

Our walks in the Natural Reserve 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' were made through a varied landscape. The marked trails we followed always start at a parking place, most of the times with an information center or information point nearby. We always started out in an area of woodland and at some point we came to the moors and the trail always ended at the starting point, so we re-entered the woods near the end of the trail. We like this variation very much. 
There are not many areas of heath in The Netherlands so we like to visit them.

To understand the structure of the landscape I added a passage I copied from the Wikipedia page about the Sallandse Heuvelrug:

"From the Middle Ages onwards the area was used for grazing by sheep and goat, and the upper layer of the soil was removed to use it as fertilizer for the crop fields. In this period, the area became a heathland because of sand-drifting. In the beginning of the 20th century the state started forestry programs, to prevent this erosion and to produce pine wood. The area is well known for its scenery because of its relatively large heathlands."

The second day of our four days vacation was a very foggy day. The mist did not leave the entire day although at some point the sun was more or less visible through the mist.
The reference picture for this painting was made (by me) at one of those brighter moments. We were about to enter one of the areas of woodland and the heath was a bit further away. On the field behind the path are bushes of cowberries and the foreground is mostly moss and lichen. The birch tree is standing all alone, maybe there have been more in a recent past, although that does nor seem very likely as there were no tree stumps in sight.

This scene is much greener than the ones I painted earlier. The moss, lichen and the cowberry bushes are evergreens, the grass in between and the heath in the distance are brown.
The trees of the woodland are faded away by the fog, as are the bushes in the distance.

For this painting I challenged myself to mix my greens from blue and yellow colours. 
I should have done this years ago, this works much better than mixing the ready made green with brown, blue, yellow or red in order to make them more like the colours of nature.

More information (size, paper and paint used, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

"Sallandse Heuvelrug' - Twilight

As I told before, we went to our Natural Reserve 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' for a short vacation in the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve. In the four days we were there, we went hiking for three days. Each day had its own kind of weather and the differences were inspiring us to make lots of photographs. 
The first day we were walking in the late afternoon, just before sunset. We had driven to our destination first and thus it was not really early as we started walking. 
We had chosen a marked trail of about 6 km and because we were making so many photographs, we were not making much progress. 
One of the rules about walking in the Natural Reserves in The Netherlands is that you are free to walk on the paths of a Natural Reserve, but you have to leave before sunset. Because it was winter, we made it just in time.
The sky was clear that afternoon and the colours of the sunset were wonderful. I could not help making some reference pictures for the purpose of painting later - back at home.

As this was a twilight scene, I used my Twilight Colours to paint it. I chose to do this painting on a quarter sheet (a full sheet is 51 x 76 cm, usually I use a half sheet, 38 x 51 cm). The thoughts behind that choice are not easy to explain, usually this is a decision based upon the 'feeling' of my subject and most of the times I make a decision that gives me a nice painting as a result.

More information about this watercolour painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

'Sallandse Heuvelrug' - crossroad within sight

The mystery of the moors in foggy weather really intrigued me. 
Most of the times when we are hiking I am not the person holding and using the camera, this time I made a lot of reference pictures because I kept seeing things that were inviting me to paint.
As it was not only foggy but also cold we did not stop for sketches, only pictures.

At this point we were walking towards a crossroad - as can be seen by the trees standing there. A bit beyond the crossroad the trees were gone again as if only that point was to be made seen by the trees.
In winter the heather plants are dark and brown, the grasses are golden yellow and the trees are dark because of the moist. At this point the sand was a bit red - not yellow or the grey colour I saw in other spots.
Therefore I could use a limited palette of four colours, something I feel very comfortable about. The haziness caused by the foggy circumstances gives me a good exercise in wet-in-wet painting, creating even softer edges than I normally do. Only the foreground is a bit sharper than the rest of the scene, but I really tried not to overdo that sharpness.
I do not have the ambition to make a photo-realistic painting, I try to paint how it felt to be at that spot, at that moment, in that weather, in that season.
With this watercolour painting I think I am very close to what I wanted to paint.

More information about this painting (size, colours and paper used, etc) and the others I made inspired by the 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Sallandse Heuvelrug - the road to.....?

In the mist everything feels a bit different compared to a bright day. Maybe I would not have liked the scenes I painted so much when I had seen them on a clear day, with lots of sunshine and the clouds high above us in the sky.
To find that out, I should revisit the 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' on a sunny day, maybe even in summer.
For now it happened to be foggy and mysterious when we walked that path over the moors and I was inspired to make reference pictures or to ask for pictures to be taken (my husband Peter made this one for me) and to make plans for paintings.

This painting was made after I returned home, it is a larger size than the previous ones I posted (with the 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' for inspiration). 
We were not taking the road I painted, so I do not know where it will end. 
The trees are pine trees, planted about a century ago for wood-production purposes. Many of these pines have already been harvested - the stumps in the foreground are the remains of those trees.
Further away may be more trees, bushes or...? It is hidden by the fog.
The grasses and heather on the foreground are in their winter colours, yellow and brown.

For this painting I used the same colours I did before, I only added a green shade for the pines. 

Working on a larger sheet of paper was somehow easier for me than the small sizes, that is probably because this is my habitual size of paper. And being back in my studio was also very nice.
We have made three walks in the Natural Reserve, so I do have some more pictures to paint from, but as my vacation is over I  don't have the time to paint (and post) daily any more.

More information about this watercolour painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com