Bayeux - the old town

During our short vacation in Normandy (France) we visited the town of Bayeux, mostly because our vacation home was very close to that medieval town.
We did go to see the Tapestry and the Cathedral and walked back to our car by the river Aure that flows through the town. There are two watermills in Bayeux that are still working.

We did have many nice views during our walk in Bayeux, but this one inspired me to paint.
It is quite a change after what I painted before, to do a scene with all those roofs and buildings, but I wanted to paint the colours of the houses we saw in that part of Normandy.

The roofs of the buildings in Bayeux are grey, the colour of slate. The buildings are made with a yellow stone. Even the cathedral has these colours and in the villages we passed we also saw that this stone was used for houses and farms. 

While I was painting this scene I thought I made a wrong choice more than once, because this was not easy. Mostly because the scene is not what I usually paint and also a bit because I was not having ideal painting conditions like I have in my little studio at home. 
In short, this was a fight - with myself, the paper, the paint, the subject, etc.
When I was about to give up, my husband said the painting is nice and I should have a rest and a cup of coffee. That helped.

This watercolour painting is not about the architecture of Old Bayeux, but about how it feels to walk there between those yellow stone buildings by the river Aure and I think I managed to paint that - even though it was not easy to do so.

The details about paper and paint, size, availability etc. can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Autumn colours the sky - 2

The colours of autumn are really great to work with, so I could not resist the temptation to make another painting with them. For this one I used a sketch I made after a picture my daughter Mariska made in Portugal. 
When you walk around the church of Santa Luzia above Viana do Castelo you get this view of dome of the church. The foreground is a combination of bushes and treetops. 
For this painting I imagined a strong backlight so the details of the dome would not be visible.

More information about this painting and the one I painted from this sketch before can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr 

Day by day -Ardennes day four

Today was about composition. We went up to find an open landscape and make sketches with different comositions such as square, portrait, landscape size. We had to reduce the landscape we saw to big shapes of colour value, light dark and middle. With those sketches we returned to the house to make our paintings. Returning was a nice thing to do, as it was dry today but very windy and cold.
After a few hours of work I think my watercolour is finished, the sketch and the result are in the photo. I will make a more detailed post about it after I get home.

Peonies in autumn

We have peonies in our garden, so in springtime we enjoy the wonderful flowers and when autumn comes the leaves start colouring beautifully. 
Last autumn my daughter made some photos for me to paint. But this time I wanted to do something with the watercolour pencils I have. 
I made a simple composition from one of the photos and started colouring. I layered different colours, mixing them on my paper and after doing that I did not want to risk losing all this by brushing water over my drawing. 
So the drawing was not touched with water, only the outlines a bit so I could add a background with watercolour paint and salt for texture.
  
More information about this drawing can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr