Tree Bark - Platanus

 

The structure of the bark of the plane tree (Platanus) is beautifully coloured and has a nice texture so I had to use that tree in my series about tree bark and other things as well.

On a watercolour under painting - not very strongly pigmented this time - I used my Graphitint pencils for the tree bark and used some water to 'awaken' some areas of the drawing.

Over that drawing I outlined the leaves - found on the ground after a windy day - and added the three major veins of the leaves. These lines were 'awoken' with water as well. 

I decided to stop here because adding more colour or structure would make this drawing a chaotic one and I really wanted the structure and colours of the tree bark to be visible.

The information about the materials I have used, the size and availability of this work and - if you are interested in my original artwork - my contact information can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

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.

Plane tree, winter

 

Not far from my home - I can see it from the garden - is a large plane tree and I wanted to paint or draw it for a long time. Last winter I made some reference pictures of the tree and now I have found the time to draw it.

Of course it also took so long because I wanted to use the Naturel PaintOn paper as my background and I only got that paper recently. After I had the paper I also needed time to think about 'how do I want to draw the tree' and time to draw it. 

The thinking about 'how' resulted in three colours of Conté Crayons that do not at all resemble the true colours of the tree, but are a good combination of values; a dark, a middle and a light value with the colour of the paper between the middle and the light values.

The reference pictures were made in winter, so the tree is still bare, with only showing the seed balls that are still on the branches. By now most of them have fallen off. The many different colours of the bark are only suggested as I do not want to show all of the details. The same applies to the smallest branches, seen in back light.

This drawing is what I hoped it would be and I think I have now found the best way to draw a living tree with my Conté crayons.

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 work, please contact me.

Blijdorp Zoo - at the Terrace

Each year I make a visit to Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam with my mother. We like to walk there and watch the lions, tigers, giraffes, polar bears, elephants and.....
The area is not only a Zoo, but also a botanical garden and we enjoy the trees and bushes as much as we like the  animals.

This time the weather was a bit cold, so we entered one of the restaurants for some coffee. This restaurant is part of the 'Rivièra Hal', one of the National Monuments in Blijdorp Zoo. We were close to a window and had a nice view of the Terrace and especially on one of the old plane trees (Platanus). As we were waiting for the coffee, I took out my sketchbook and pencils and started to draw what I could see. Of course I had finished my coffee before the sketch.
Behind the tree was a part of the edge of the Terrace  visible. Like most of the architecture in Blijdorp Zoo, this is also beautifully designed.

I have decided to draw this scene using charcoal and my Tinted Charcoal pencils. The addition of some colour makes the scene a bit more gentle. 

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