In this autumnal scene I have combined two prompts for this month again, trees and clouds. Landscape painters do lots of clouds and lots of trees, so I had to think of something I had not done before. That is not an easy task.
For this painting I have used a reference picture I have made last spring, so I had to change the colours. In a magazine I found an example of a landscape in autumn colours that inspired me to follow its colour scheme and translate that to watercolours. I changed the fields into a pond and now I only had to paint it.
As I have done before this watercolour painting is built up by mixing the colours wet-in-wet, placing shadows and highlights where I want them to be and adjusting it all because of the unpredictability of watercolour.
The atmosphere could have been much darker, but I wanted the trees to be golden and red, so there had to be some light.
This is what I hoped it would be and I have enjoyed painting this one.
More information about this painting (paper and colours used, size, contact information, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
For this still life I have combined two of the prompts given by Doodlewash; cookies and hot drinks. After much thinking I have used the handmade cup that stands in my studio holding my sketching pencils and imagine some hot chocolate in it.
I have placed the cup next to my watercolour paper and made my drawing.
The cookies are from my memory. Placing fresh cookies in my studio would not be a good idea as they would not last long enough to be painted.
The right colours for the hot chocolate and the cookies were hard to find.
I have no problem getting my cookies in the right colour when I am baking them, painting them in the right colour was quite a challenge. I am not completely happy with the results but for a first attempt it is not so very bad.
For this painting I have also used Chinese White for the cookies and Iridescent Medium for the cup and I have suggested some vapour coming from the hot chocolate with the Iridescent Medium.
Autumn is not only about falling leaves, chestnuts, mushrooms and great colours but also about comfort food and this painting is all about that part of the season.
More information about this watercolour painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Autumn is here now, outside in nature and mostly in the shops with great food ideas, warming spices and lots of apples and pears.
Doodlewash is in autumnal moods also this month and I have combined two prompts into one still life painting.
I have made my composition directly on the watercolour paper and started painting wet-on-dry. Of course after that first layer of paint the next were done wet-on-wet and the colours of the apples and leaves were mixing as I had hoped they would. Well, most of the time they were doing as I hoped, I had to work a bit harder on some areas.
The paintings and drawings I make inspired by the prompts on the Doodlewash site are always 'something different' compared to my usual work. Here I have used some colours I don't often use and drawing a composition directly on my watercolour paper is also a bit of an experiment. There was no example and I made it up while drawing, adding leaves, apples and in the end the little branches from above while I was listening to my intuition.
The result of all those experiments is what I hoped it would be.
This painting was made for practise and improving my skills and I am always happy when a work like this turns out nice.
More information about this painting (materials used, availability, size, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
The list of suggestions for September 2018 gives 'Read a Book Day' for this day. As you no doubt have already noticed, I do not paint or sketch using every prompt in the list supplied by Doodlewash. I need to be inspired to paint (or draw) before I even start thinking about what I will make for the occasion.
Reading books is one of my passions (besides watercolour painting and cooking) so I wanted to do something with this day.
Open books with things (gentle or not) coming out of them are a very common theme so I had to do something else. When reading a book I sometimes 'disappear' in the story I am reading so that was to be the theme. And now something that fits my skills....
The idea of diving came up, the diving that is done in a swimming pool and there is no water splashing in all directions but words, or fragments of words.
As I have not been in public swimming pools for years, I had to imagine a structure for the tower that holds the diving board. Photo references on the Internet show many possibilities, so I invented my own. This one is for diving into a good book so there should be no limits.
This time I have used my Watercolour Markers - and a brush with some water - for most of the image and I have added Line markers where I thought they would be needed.
I am still exploring the possibilities and limitations of these markers and I am not disappointed with the result of this experiment.
The letters are parts of the words 'read a book' in English, Dutch and French.
More information about this line and wash drawing can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
According to the list of subjects suggested for this month (September 2018) by Doodlewash today is Skyscraper Day.
In The Netherlands we do not have real skyscrapers, due to the condition of our soil. For inspiration I had to go to the Internet, to find me some reference pictures of skyscrapers. Of course I have used a vanishing point and a lot of lines (and my eraser), for the perspective has to be right in a composition like this.
I had already decided that I would make a painting 'looking up'. The reason for this choice lies in the Dutch name for these buildings; 'wolkenkrabbers' which translates to 'cloud scrapers'. I wanted the buildings to disappear in the clouds and a 'looking up' view would make painting that just a bit more challenging.
As it all had to be imaginary I have not copied the glass buildings that can be found on the Internet, but decided to use the colours of bricks for my buildings. This way they look more like the buildings that can be found in The Netherlands.
For this painting I have used the cellulose paper I had bought recently and this time the 'fight' was just a little bit harder. This could be caused by the fact I had to do buildings with straight lines this time, combined with the vague shapes in the clouds.
My hairdryer has done a good job here, more than once.
Once again I have used the suggestion by Doodlewash to try something I do not usually do. This time I have painted imaginary buildings in an unusual perspective.
More information about this watercolour painting (size, materials used, availability, etc.) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
In some of my earlier blog posts I may have mentioned that I am member of Doodlewash.com, and that sometimes I use the prompts they supply to get inspiration for a painting.
For the month of September (2018) the prompts are based on really existing remembrance or appreciation days. Today it is Ginger Cat appreciation Day so I just had to try to paint one or more Ginger cats!
I used the references from 'Plaisirs de Peindre' Magazine that I have used before to make drawings. The drawings were not so hard to do, watercolour is quite a challenge when it is about the cats. The tree trunk they are climbing on was easy.
I have tried to use different colour mixtures, based on Burnt Sienna to make two different cats. Ginger cats come in all sorts of colour mixtures, some of them have a lot of white in their fur, others are in shades of an orange-brown with more or less stripes.
The cat on the left only got some sense of roundness after I had used pencils, as all the paint I applied continued to flow out to become a very flat looking surface.
I do not know what caused that problem, maybe the colours I used to mix the shades of 'Ginger' for the fur.
With this painting I have tried to paint animals - a subject I usually avoid. That said, the results are not very bad and I might want to do this more often to become more experienced and (I hope) better.
This painting was done mostly for the fun of planning and painting a watercolour of two Ginger Cats.
There are more remembrance days in Doodlewash's list for this month so there will be some more paintings that I would not usually do.
And the title of the painting? That comes from the Dr.Who fans.
