The watercolour painting I made before was not really the painting I wanted to paint.
The subject may be a bit too much for watercolour: with both the massive mountains and the foggy atmosphere in the distance together in a painting one of those is bound to go wrong somehow.
Or maybe I just need more years of experience.
But I really wanted to paint this scene!
So if watercolour does not work, then I have to try this in another technique.
I got my charcoal and a Conté pencil (in sepia) and started to work on the Gorge again. Working with both materials together is something I tried only once, but drawing this was not hard to do. Well, the technical part wasn't.
The subject is still not easy for me and that might just be because I live in an very flat country.
The reference photo was taken by my son Martijn when he visited Taiwan a few years ago. As I described in my post with the watercolour painting in it, he told me about the clouds hanging so low that the tops of the mountains were invisible and the atmosphere in the gorge was muggy.
More information about this drawing and the watercolours I made of Taroko Gorge can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
The reference picture for this one (taken by my son Martijn) has been waiting to be painted for almost four years now. When my son showed me the pictures he had taken in Taroko Gorge, Taiwan I made a watercolour of one of them within a few weeks.
He told me about his riding a bike in that landscape with clouds hanging so low that he could not see the top of the mountains and the sound of the river everywhere.
Somehow he could not really catch that atmosphere with his camera and I accepted the challenge to paint it. At that moment I succeeded doing that and I let the other pictures rest for a while.
Now I felt it was time for another try. I decided to use another green as base for all the shades of green I had to paint. That fog is not as easy as is seems - but that may also depend on the colours and paper I am using now. (I did not use these four years ago)
Because of all the moist in the air there is nothing with really sharp outlines, yet all the structures are visible. Lots of water on my paper do help in achieving that atmosphere, but with caution as it's easily overdone.
Working on this one I did learn some more things about the colours on my palette - as is one of my goals for this year.
More information about this watercolour (and the one I painted a few years ago) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
