Pendulum with shells - a pencil drawing

 

In  my previous post I mentioned the day of plein-air painting and drawing with some members of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' in a large garden in the Alblasserwaard (The Netherlands).

Not only the bog oak inspired me, there were also some pendulums with shells, used as scarecrows in that garden. I never made a painting or drawing of shells before, so I decided to make a small size drawing of one of them.

My seat was close to the pendulum and I did the drawing without use of a reference picture, just as 'plein-air' is meant to be. Of course there is a reference picture just in case I want to do another drawing or painting about these shells.

The first layer of pencil was 'awakened' with some water, only the shells. After that more layers of pencil were added to the shells. The branch/stick that did hold the pendulum in place has only one layer of pencil, no watter added. The black cord that was used to tie the shells was drawn with a graphite pencil.

This little still life was made just for fun, 'because I can' and I an happy with the result.

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

Bog oak - a charcoal drawing

 

As I have mentioned before I am member of an amateur art association, 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' that is based in the 'Alblasserwaard' and 'Molenlanden' (The Netherlands). Every summer a few plein-air painting days are organised in our region and this time we were welcome to paint in a very large garden of one of our members in the village of Giessenburg. The garden really is large and full of inspirational items so every painter found a spot to paint or draw.

In that garden were some bog oaks, retrieved from the surrounding areas when work on ditches was done or a patch of land was prepared for the building of houses. These oaks were at least two hundred years old when they died and were submerged in the peat bog and it is estimated that they have been there up to four thousand years. 

The most beautiful one still had a part of its root structure and I sat down close to it to make a charcoal drawing.

The other side, with much more structure visible was faced to a ditch and too close to it to sit down and draw, so I made reference pictures for later use.

This side of the tree was well lit by the sun and I enjoyed drawing all those little details using my charcoal - and my fingers for blending.

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 artworks, please contact me.

Tree! - a Conté drawing

 

During the workshop morning with Pictura in the garden of the 'Dordrechts Museum' I sketched some of the trees there as these are old and impressive. 

There are three Platanus trees in that garden, that were already there when the Museum was founded, in the year 1904. These trees are maybe 200 years old and they look like their age. The trees are really large and as they are in a garden in an old city it is not possible to make a (reference) picture of the whole tree, they are too tall for that. 

The tree trunks have several bulges, maybe scar tissue where branches have been cut off. The lowest branch grows at least 3 meters above ground.

After I had made my sketch, I moved on to another tree and did not do much with this sketch. The sketch went to the exposition in the 'Pictura' building that ended over a week ago.

Now the sketch is back in my home - and my studio - I can work from it. The vertical lines in the sketch are showing the structure of the corrugated cardboard that we had to support our sheets of sketching paper.

It has been over two month that I was in that Museum garden and my memory of that tree has faded a little, there are no reference pictures, so the sketch is all I have to work with. 

This Conté drawing, using brown and earth colours on a light brown (naturel) background may not be an exact reproduction of the tree or the sketch, it does show what did attract my attention to this tree: the bulges on the tree trunk.

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

View from the train Alençon - Le Mans (France)

 

Every summer my husband Peter travels to France for his volunteer work. He stays away from home two days and often sends me pictures of where he has been. This time he sent me a picture of the view from the train from Alençon to Le Mans and I decided to paint it.

As it is still warm and damp, I had to use my hairdryer to dry the painting between layers and even then the paper would get damp again in places I had not touched with a brush after using the dryer. So the result is more atmospheric than detailed, but I don't mind that in a landscape.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of the painting and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog. If you are interested in my original artwork, please contact me.

Calla - in my garden

 

A few years ago I bought a Calla plant for my mother, for inside her home. Unfortunately I had forgotten that this plant is not healthy for her cat, so it moved to my home and after the flower died, it moved to my garden.  Every year the leaves emerged and died again in winter but it took all these years for the plant to bloom again. Of course we made several pictures and one of the pictures my husband made is the reference for this watercolour painting.

For this painting I selected a small sheet of paper, only one flower that is my subject, so that does not need a big sheet of paper. Especially not in this moist summer heat, when the paper does not dry as quickly as I would like it to. A large size painting would have been more of a struggle than a nice, calming afternoon in my studio.

The result is what I hoped it would be and 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.

Tree collage - for a challenge

 

This month the challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' is called 'Papier hier!' translated to 'paper here!', the words that come from the large trash collectors in the famous theme parc 'De Efteling'. A fairy tale figure - always hungry - cries for the paper (and other trash) and answers with a 'thank you' if he is given something.

For the challenge we were asked to do something creative with paper - not an ordinary material, but in fact really versatile.

This was a bit of a challenge for me, I'm not much of a crafter anymore - especially since I started painting. So I had to think about what would be best to hand in.

For this work I tore up old printed matter (with a collection of watercolours of mine) and pasted it on a sheet of A3 paper. On the back I very roughly drew an indication of the annual rings of a tree stump and cut the rings out.

I traced the structure of wood - but as planks - on a sheet of watercolour paper and coloured it with watercolour markers.

I glued the cut-out collage on top and the rings that I did not use immediately were applied upside down at the top right. Because this turned out va bit too white I glued narrow edges of collage on top.

So I did some crafting, some drawing and I used trees as my inspiration again.

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

Dark clouds over the 'Vlaardingse Vaart' (The Netherlands)

 

Last weekend we had a real Summer storm in our country and as it happened to be the weekend of a birthday party in our family we were celebrating in a nice restaurant near the Vlaardingse Vaart. 

The plan was that we would be on an open terrace, but due to the weather it was covered and closed with glass doors. We still had a nice view of the water and the polder landscape but the wind and rain did not spoil the party mood inside. 

We had a lot of wind and some rain but after the rain I went outside to make some reference pictures. The clouds and the water of the Vaart inspired me, not to mention the flat grasslands and reeds on the other bank of the Vlaardingse Vaart.

For this watercolour I have used a limited palette, the colours were chosen to capture the mood of that stormy Summer's day.

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.