Calla - in my garden

 

A few years ago I bought a Calla plant for my mother, for inside her home. Unfortunately I had forgotten that this plant is not healthy for her cat, so it moved to my home and after the flower died, it moved to my garden.  Every year the leaves emerged and died again in winter but it took all these years for the plant to bloom again. Of course we made several pictures and one of the pictures my husband made is the reference for this watercolour painting.

For this painting I selected a small sheet of paper, only one flower that is my subject, so that does not need a big sheet of paper. Especially not in this moist summer heat, when the paper does not dry as quickly as I would like it to. A large size painting would have been more of a struggle than a nice, calming afternoon in my studio.

The result is what I hoped it would be and the information about the materials I have used, the size of this watercolour painting and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Rose - pencil drawing

Last weekend I was part of the 'Af en Toe Kunstroute', an Art route not far from my home. Showing my art to visitors, talking to other artists and making a drawing was what I did that day. The weather was great, we had over 60 visitors at my location.

Just sitting for over six hours is not what I like to do, so I made several reference pictures of one of the flowers of the climbing red rose in my garden. Pencil drawing is relatively clean (no need to wash my hands every fifteen minutes or more often) and I can put it down, talk to visitors of the Art route and pick it up where I stopped without getting in any kind of trouble.  I selected some paper and pencils and packed these with the art I wanted to show. 

For the drawing I used the first two reference pictures, the flower bud still closed and the same flower bud opening a little bit. I took my time - there was no hurry at all - and after I had finished the two flowers I decided to add some leaves that were not to be as detailed as the flowers - just to suggest a background. 

In reality these leaves are there and many more, but this drawing just needed the ones I added to make sure the rose buds/flower are my subject.

The other reference pictures (the flower is completely opened now) will probably be used in later drawings.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of the drawing and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog. If you are interested in my art, please do contact me.

Sacred Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera)

 

 

Yesterday we went to Diergaarde Blijdorp for a visit to the animals and of course the flowers, trees and other plants, as this zoo is also a botanical garden. We are not often there in summer, but there had been a lockdown so we could not visit earlier in the year.

Of course we enjoyed the animals but we also needed a drink so we sat down on a terrace in the shade of a large parasol with a cup of tea. 

In a corner of the terrace were some pots with  Sacred Lotus (according to the information sign), mostly leaves and one large flower bud. Even though it was at a small distance, the flower bud and the leaves were clearly visible and I sketched them while waiting for the tea to turn cold enough to drink it.

Today I wanted to paint from my sketch, while the colours were still fresh in my memory and I decided to make a 'white on black' painting, using white gouache mixed with watercolour paints to paint the Lotus plant.

The flower bud was bright green and light yellow, so that was easy to paint, layering gouache that was lightly tinted with watercolour paint. The leaves are a dark green, with shadows  and these were not as easy. After one layer of tinted gouache I had to use only dark watercolour paint and that does not build up very well on black cardboard. In the end I used my watercolour pencils on the dried paint to suggest the cup - like shape of the leaves. These pencil marks are dry and do not mix with previous layers so that worked as I hoped it would.

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

Poppy - and visitor

 

There are poppies everywhere now, the reference photo for this watercolour was made by my husband during our short stay in a vacation home in Kortgene, but it could also have been made more recently, close to our home.

My husband made pictures for me and I have combined two pictures to make one watercolour. 

This poppy had a visitor, probably a bee but I do not know what kind of bee - there are many bees and I can't tell them apart.

Behind the poppy with the bee there I placed another flower and I have taken care to give that poppy more muted colours.

There was a lot of sunshine that day so there was a lot of shadow in the flower, only the outer petals were bright red. The inner petals were curving inward and had shadows cast on them by the other petals. It was not easy to paint all those curves and folds.

For this painting I have mixed a shadow colour first and painted the shadow areas on the white paper. After that had dried, I applied several layers of red, in different mixtures to obtain the fiery red colour of the poppy. The background flower got only two layers of red so the shadow colours are more dominant in the final result.

The flower stems are quite light green and I made them stand out a bit in a darker green background.

The bee is painted with a small brush to get the stripes right.

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

Ragged-robin

Last weekend we went for a walk in our beautiful nature. Because of the restrictions we left home really early and arrived almost first at the beginning point of the signposted walk we planned to do. After the walk there were a lot more cars in the parking area so we ate our lunch and returned home.
During the walk we enjoyed the fresh air, being outside, the nature and we made some pictures - of course.
These flowers were on the side of a ditch and my husband leaned over the fence to make some reference pictures for me. It took some effort to find the name of the flower, but I found it in a book that has been given to me by my parents over fifty years ago. The English name was found using Wikipedia.

The flowers are a nice shade of pinkish violet and I wanted the background to be warm, not green. On this part of the plant are no leaves, so I did not need any green at all. 
The stems and flower buds are dark red or almost violet.
Because the flowers have a light colour I painted the background first and modified that - after I painted the flowers - where needed.

The information about the paper and paints I have used, the size of the painting and the availability can be found in the link at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Hydrangea - shades of red

These Hydrangea flowers are also in the garden of Milonga, where I was last week for a painting vacation. These flowers intrigue me very much, mostly because the large four leaf shapes on the outside are not flowers at all. They are there to seduce the insects to come to the plant and the five pointed shapes in the middle are the real flowers, waiting to be fertilised by those insects. 

I have sketched some of the 'fake flowers' ans some of the shapes in the heart of the structure, the flower buds and some of the star shaped 'real flowers' to make a nice composition for a red painting.
This time I made the background in shades of red and I had to use three layers of watercolour paint before it was to my liking. In the middle was to be a source of light, this is different from the paintings I made earlier this week, where the light came from one of the corners.

Our teacher Ad van Aart helped me find the right composition for this background and advised during the making of the painting. I had to add some more flower shapes on the edges of my painting and added a light wash of yellow to make the light source warm.

Even if this is only one week, I am learning fast and I really am happy with the result of this experiment. I never thought I would be painting flowers every day and enjoying it but this is what happened to me during this painting vacation. 
There is one more painting to come that I made in Milonga, but at home I will have to explore this theme a bit more, there are a lot of nice colour combinations and compositions that have not been tried yet.

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

Cornflower

Looking for inspiration I saw blue spots in the grass beside the roads in our village and the villages close to ours. The idea of painting Cornflowers was born, but now I had to think of a way to make this 'my painting'.
Working on a background painting that is made by colours flowing over my paper is something I do not do often, but I always enjoy it. This kind of background is always a surprise and can be used in many ways.

So I decided to make a background with the blue colours of the flowers and paint the cornflowers in that background. I did not leave the shapes of the flowers open and decided where to make them look light blue against a dark background and dark against a light spot in the background after I had been painting for a while.
Because of that I also made some adjustments to the initial background painting, but that was only to make the flowers stand out as much as I wanted - not much, but just enough to give this watercolour painting a nice atmosphere. 

More information about this watercolour painting (materials used, size, availability, contact information, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com