The Drowned Land of Zuid-Beveland -- watercolour

 

Last week we were for a very short vacation in our province Zeeland and we made some nice walks near the shorelines of the Oosterschelde. Of course we (my husband and me) made lots of pictures and I have made some charcoal drawings during our stay in the vacation home. 

Now that I am back in my own home, where my little studio is, I can make watercolour paintings using the reference pictures I have made.

I started with one of the pictures I have made during our walk along the Drowned Lands of Zuid-Beveland. I have written about this beautiful but fragile piece of nature in my previous post.

This scene with the salt marshes and a bit of the mudflats in the background would not look very good in a charcoal drawing - the tones of the vegetation of the salt marshes are similar so that would be a lot of the same shade of grey. The same goes for the mudflats and the water in the background.

In reality there are  shades of blueish green and violet in the vegetation of the salt marshes The mudflats have the colours of wet sand and the water looks grey because we had a day with a grey sky without any contrasts.

For this painting I wanted to show the creeks in the salt marshes. Some creeks can be seen easily, the other ones can only be found when looking at the shadow lines in the vegetation. 

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

The Drowned Land of Zuid-Beveland

 

During our short stay in a vacation home in Kortgene, we also went for a walk along the Drowned Lands of Zuid-Beveland. This area was drowned by the sea long before the great flooding of 1953 and several villages have disappeared over time in the water.

Now the mainland is protected by dykes and dams and along one of these dykes is a walking path along the mudflats, salt marshes and creeks that are there now. Of course there is some tidal action as the Oosterschelde is connected to the North Sea, the creeks were almost empty when we walked there, but the salt marshes have vegetation. The area is fragile and protected, we were only allowed on the path and on the dykes.

Because I had only brought along my drawing materials for such a short stay, this is another charcoal drawing, made in the vacation home using a picture I made during the walk as my reference. This time I added a little bit of colour using my watercolour pencils to draw attention to the green colours in the landscape. The creek in the foreground was a bit wider and there were lots of dark remains of plants (seaweeds?) but in the background the salt marsh was higher and had vegetation. Even further away there were only mudflats and water while on the horizon is one of the dams that protect the mainland.

Some of the scenes I photographed will look better in watercolour, as the vegetation there was not only green, but had shades of violet as well. The dark shadows of the creeks will also make more sense in a coloured painting so there is a lot of work for me during the weeks to come. In fact I am looking forward to that!

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