My little oak tree - Autumn

 

Last year we had a surprise in our garden, we suddenly had an oak tree. A little one of course and probably the acorn was planted by a jay that did not have the opportunity to eat it before it turned into a plant. We re-planted our tree so it would not be killed during a lawn-mowing activity and it survived all this. 

So now the tree is in its second year and at this moment it shows nice autumn colours. Which means I have to paint my little oak tree.

For this painting I made several reference pictures and selected a nice group of leaves showing the autumnal colours of an oak tree. The background is lightly coloured and the leaves have the same colours - and some more.

This is the first time I paint oak leaves so very detailed and I really like the result of my work.

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.

Autumn - maple

 

Today is the beginning of Autumn and I have wanted to paint in Autumn colours for more than a week now. 

This is my painting, inspired by a sketch I made almost five years ago using a photo reference that I cannot find again. But the sketch - almost a study - was very detailed so I used my imagination for the colours.

The next challenge was to find what kind of maple tree this was - I did see the tree and made the reference picture in the parc close to my home - so I looked in books and on the internet to find it. It is a field maple tree or Acer campestre.

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. If you are interested in my original artworks, please contact me.

Monday is wash day

 

The September challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' is about 'Monday is wash day' and my inspiration came from stories of cat owners in my family.

After the wash is dry, a nice stack of towels makes a very comfy place for a cat nap so that is what I have been drawing and painting. For this challenge I decided to keep it simple, not too many details and suggesting the table, the towels, the hanging wash and the cat just by their shapes and some shadows.

For this work I used watercolour and line markers in many colours, the information about these materials, the size of this work and its availability can be found in my Tumblr blog.

Beech tree bark

 

During my painting vacation I made several reference pictures of trees and tree bark hoping I could use them that same week. One of the pictures is of a beech tree that had several dark spots at eye level (my eyes) so I made the picture. When looking at my pictures our teacher and coach Ad van Aart suggested I would make a watercolour painting of that part of the tree including a bit of the background. 

So I tried to do that, on the hottest afternoon of the month. Of course I failed being too tired with the heat and humidity and my paper (I selected Grain Torchon) would not dry because of that same humidity. At last I gave up and when I did show the work everyone mistook the tree for a birch, the tree trunk was too light and the dark spots were too dark, as you can see below.

As I wanted to paint the beech tree, I tried again at home on Grain Fin paper and I started differently. Now I succeeded to make it look like a beech tree. 

This tree stands in the shadow of other, large trees all the time and did not grow upright. 

The tree bark is dark grey with patches of green that are caused by some algae growing on the tree bark. The dark spots are not all dark brown (my mistake in the first version) but just darker grey with a touch of the green I mentioned. For this version I also changed the composition a bit, the left side of the tree - with some extra dark structures - is now visible so the structure of the tree trunk is more comprehensible.

The second painting (the one above) is what I hoped for. Beech trees do not have a very structured bark and this is the best I could do.

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

View on Dordrecht from Papendrecht (The Netherlands) made during a workshop session

 

The 'Teekengenootschap Pictura' from Dordrecht is 250 years old and that is celebrated with different activities. One of these activities is a series of workshops about drawing during the summer months. I have attended the first one and now also the last one. (the two in the middle were either booked full or inot possible to attend for me).

This one was all about the View on Dordrecht from my home village/town, Papendrecht. Following the Old Masters, we were to make a charcoal drawing of a view on Dordrecht preferably featuring the iconic buildings like the 'Grootshoofdspoort', the 'Grote Kerk' (big church) and less old, the railway bridge between Dordrecht and Zwijndrecht.

Because the weather forecast was not so great, we were on the terrain of the marina where we could go indoors if needed. So we did not have the 'classic' views of Cuyp, Willaerts and many more, but the view we had was still worth drawing.

We had a large sheet of paper and I folded it in two, so I could make two drawings on one sheet - and the smaller size did feel more comfortable to me as well.

The weather still was not bright, dark clouds were above us almost all the time and that can be seen in mu drawings. We were behind a row of bushes and these can also be seen in my drawings. The river was mostly behind these bushes and the view was limited, but I decided on two 'looking directions' that would give a view on Dordrecht.

The second, portrait format drawing is more a view on the 'Drierivierenpunt' (three rivers point) with the Water Tower of Zwijndrecht in view and the ferry from Papendrecht to Dordrecht waiting for its time to go.

Both drawings are to be seen in the Library of Papendrecht after September 26th in the exhibition of the works that were made during the workshop.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of these drawings and their availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Sleep well!

 

During our painting vacation we were visited and sometimes encouraged by the old calico cat that lives at the location where we stayed. We were surprised to see her again, she is 18 years old now. Most of the daytime she sleeps in a nice spot and so I made a reference picture with the plan to make a drawing somewhere in the near future.

The last day our teacher and coach Ad van Aart did not have a small/short exercise for me for the afternoon so I decided to make the drawing I wanted to do.

Using my watercolour pencils I made this drawing, only layering pencil colours and not using water - I wanted to keep my brushes dry to be able to pack them that afternoon as it was the last afternoon of our stay there.

As she is old and very skinny, her fur is 'fluffy' and I tried to draw that as well. 

This had to be a quick one, there was not much time left before we were to close the week with a discussion of the works we made during the week.

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

If you are interested in  my original artwork, contact me.

Storm coming - two paintings, one storm

 

In the middle of our painting week a storm was expected in the evening. Thunder and rain were predicted and we sat at the dinner table when suddenly the wind started (what a relief from the warm and damp day) and dark clouds were coming in.

Most of us (painters) stepped away from the building to make pictures of these beautiful clouds and of course I did that as well.

The clouds were very dark but there were also bright spots of light, our pictures are really inspiring. In fact there was not much rain, just a few drops (there was more the next day) and even though we could hear thunder, the lightning was above the lowest clouds.

Of course I used my most impressive picture as my reference the next morning, painting on a large sheet of watercolour paper with a dark colour mixture that should result in dark grey or even black.

The painting is made with the picture as my guideline, but as our teacher and coach Ad van Aart always says, the picture may have inspired to make a painting, but the art happens on the paper. The painting almost painted itself, using my hands as a tool and I know that trying to correct what happened would have spoiled the whole image.

The result is even better than I hoped for.

After the first painting happened so easily and in very short time, I decided to try a second one, on a smaller sheet of paper, using a different kind of paint. This paint is made with two pigments and I hoped it would give me a nice stormy sky.

Unfortunately that did not go as I wished for. This paint works in one layer and adding more does not give me the possibility to make some areas darker. As I work on a tilted surface (both in my studio on a drawing table and on my field easel) the water that runs down the paper slowly takes the paint with it to the lowest point.

Finally I asked Ad van Aart for help, as this would never become a nice dark clouded sky and I was getting a bit tired. The suggestion he made was to let the painting dry and start drawing on it with charcoal or another drawing material. I decided on charcoal and started drawing in the dark parts of the clouds, using my fingers and a piece of eraser to get the result I wanted.

There was one last surprise, after using fixative for the charcoal, the blue pigment from the paint resurfaced a little and that gave just a bit more depth to the final result.

After all this I am really happy with both works, the watercolour that went so smoothly and the experiment that turned out great after I used charcoal.

The information about the materials I used in both works can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

If you are interested in my original artwork, please contact me.