Chestnut tree - leaves

In the chestnut tree in my front garden the leaves and a lot of flower buds are already growing. The leaves are still a bit curled and have that nice light green colour of springtime.
Early this morning I made some reference pictures for this watercolour painting. 
In fact, this is the kind of painting I wanted to do two years ago, but I had not yet been instructed about how to do this. Last summer, during my painting vacation our teacher gave me lots of help, encouragement and instructions so now I am much more confident about painting like this.

For this watercolour I started with a yellow and green background and dried that completely. Using a light green watercolour pencil I drew some chestnut leaves on my paper, using the pictures I made this morning as my reference. I did not aim to make a reproduction of reality, I just wanted  the illusion of a branch with a lot of fresh leaves.
The leaves were painted using the same yellow and blue (mixed to several shades of green) and a brown that is present in the veins of the leaves.

The details of the paper and paints I have used, the size and availability can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Waterfall - charcoal drawing

A few years ago I decided I wanted to learn how to paint waterfalls and I started out really good, but after a few watercolour paintings I got distracted and started painting other things.  This is a new attempt at a waterfall and at a mixed media technique I have used a few times.

The reference picture I used was made in October (a few years ago) and the landscape was still very green with grass, moss and the green of a pine tree hanging over.

On a piece of watercolour paper I marked the places that really had to stay white and made an under painting using two shades of green. After that had dried completely I started drawing the scene with charcoal.

The structure of the watercolour paper is important for the result and I have tried to make the very best use of  it.

The broken lines that are created when charcoal is used on this paper help me to suggest more details than I am actually drawing. 

The technique of making a charcoal drawing on structured paper with a watercolour under painting is a nice one and I have to remember to use it more than I have done up to now.

Today's results are what I hope for and I have spent a few hours in my little studio enjoying myself - what more can I wish for?

The details about paper and paint used, size and contact information are at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com