Acorns

This is another watercolour painting in which I am experimenting with composition and a colour schemes that is mostly yellow.
I have been adding darker colours for contrast from the beginning and I am expanding the palette I am using - the first paintings had only four colours, this one has six colours of which four shades of yellow or ochre.

Last painting vacation I have started painting like this because I wanted to find 'my way' of painting flowers and our teacher Ad van Aart guided me in this direction. Back at home I have continued painting in this style as much as possible. 
This really feels like 'my way' and I am really happy with these paintings.

For this painting I knew I wanted to paint acorns so I made some reference pictures of branches with leaves and acorns during the last walk in the park. My husband Peter held the branches for me, to help me making the pictures I needed. (No tree was hurt or damaged in the process)

Using these pictures I sketched some acorns and leaves, giving me references for the shapes I wanted to combine for my composition.
The composition sketch was made with great care, thinking, looking and adding or erasing shapes until I was satisfied.
The yellow background was painted first in two layers that did have time to dry completely. I have used three shades of yellow for the background. After this was completed - or I did not what to make any more changes and just work with the result I already had - I decided which side was top and which would be bottom and started drawing the composition using a watercolour pencil.
And then the leaves, acorns and branches were painted. I wanted the leaves to be visible, but they should not stand out too much as the acorns were to be the subject of the painting.
At this point I asked for a second opinion (my daughter this time) and we both declared the painting finished.

In the near future I may use the composition sketch for another painting, making variations in the background colours and values.

The details about this painting (paper and colours used, size, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com