While I was on painting vacation last summer I had sketched an birch tree and decided that day not to use the sketch for a painting. The sketch and the plans I had for it were still on my to-do list, so I have made the painting.
Maybe not exactly as I had planned in summer, but even now it is not so very different from the kind of painting I wanted to create.
The tree was having all of its foliage in summer but I managed to follow the lines of the major branches for the sketch. Now that I have suggested an autumnal tree, I could make the white branches stand out much more.
For the painting I have made a drawing of the outlines of the tree and the major branches and covered that area with colourless masking fluid. Once that was dry I used water and paint to create the background, the foliage and a suggestion of fallen leaves on the ground. I applied two layers of paint to create more intense colours for both the foliage and the dark background. With all paint dry I removed the masking fluid.
After that I started to fill in the shadows and the markings that are so characteristic for the birch trees. I also applied a third layer of paint on the top part of the foliage and the ends of the branches, suggesting the existence of foliage in front of those branches.
Experimenting like this with water, paint and the suggestion of - in this case a birch tree in autumn - is really nice to do. I have found that these experiments make my 'touch' in the more traditional landscapes a bit more relaxed, especially in the suggestions of the background. So every now and then, when I start to feel stressed about painting bushes and backgrounds I will make a few paintings like this.
And of course when I feel like doing so, because - as I said before - this is fun!
More information about this watercolour painting (size, materials used, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Our walks in the Natural Reserve 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' were made through a varied landscape. The marked trails we followed always start at a parking place, most of the times with an information center or information point nearby. We always started out in an area of woodland and at some point we came to the moors and the trail always ended at the starting point, so we re-entered the woods near the end of the trail. We like this variation very much.
There are not many areas of heath in The Netherlands so we like to visit them.
To understand the structure of the landscape I added a passage I copied from the Wikipedia page about the Sallandse Heuvelrug:
"From the Middle Ages onwards the area was used for grazing by sheep and goat, and the upper layer of the soil was removed to use it as fertilizer for the crop fields. In this period, the area became a heathland because of sand-drifting. In the beginning of the 20th century the state started forestry programs, to prevent this erosion and to produce pine wood. The area is well known for its scenery because of its relatively large heathlands."
The second day of our four days vacation was a very foggy day. The mist did not leave the entire day although at some point the sun was more or less visible through the mist.
The reference picture for this painting was made (by me) at one of those brighter moments. We were about to enter one of the areas of woodland and the heath was a bit further away. On the field behind the path are bushes of cowberries and the foreground is mostly moss and lichen. The birch tree is standing all alone, maybe there have been more in a recent past, although that does nor seem very likely as there were no tree stumps in sight.
This scene is much greener than the ones I painted earlier. The moss, lichen and the cowberry bushes are evergreens, the grass in between and the heath in the distance are brown.
The trees of the woodland are faded away by the fog, as are the bushes in the distance.
For this painting I challenged myself to mix my greens from blue and yellow colours.
I should have done this years ago, this works much better than mixing the ready made green with brown, blue, yellow or red in order to make them more like the colours of nature.
More information (size, paper and paint used, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
My inspiration still works overtime and the fact that I recently bought a book about Winterlandscape painting in the nineteenth century in The Netherlands really helps me find new ways to paint a landscape with trees.
So, inspired by the old masters I transformed an autumnal landscape into a snowscape again, now in warmer colours. The landscape is still found in a small part of our National Reserve The Veluwe; the Renderklippen.
The reference photo was made by my husband Peter.
More information about this watercolour (colours used, size, etc.) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
This is not just any parking lot - it's the parking lot at our hotel on the Veluwe, last October. By day it was just a parking lot with trees and bushes surrounding it, but at night in the light of the lanterns those birch trees really did catch our attention.
So the first evening I was standing next to my daughter holding equipment while she was making lots of beautiful pictures. One of those pictures had not only the trees but also a bush in autumn colours and I decided to paint that one.
This is a scene that asks for white gouache on a black background. For the colours I just mixed in some watercolour paint, that works very well for me.
More information about this painting (size, colour and paints used etc.) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
