Weeping Willow 5 - limited palette

 

It is time to paint my weeping willow again! I have made the reference picture and a working sketch over a year ago in early Spring and used that sketch several times last year for a watercolour, changing the mood every time.

Today I wanted to revisit one of the limited palette formulas I used and I decided to combine the limited palette with the weeping willow. This limited palette has three balanced colours, placed at equal distances in the colour wheel (of twelve colours) so the resulting painting should be 'balanced' even though with my choice the primaries are not to be found in the painting. This limited palette is combined with a new toy; a 'Graphite Aquarelle' pencil or a water soluble graphite pencil. 

On my stretched paper I started painting without a preliminary sketch ( usually I mark the horizon and some important features) and the background was the first I painted, combined with the grass and the little pool beside the tree. After this had dried I added the tree and dried that again. 

Now it was play time and I started making marks with the pencil, adding a little water with my brush to make a wash effect. I soon found that I did not have to overdo this or my lines would disappear. Adding pencil lines on wet paper made them stand out more but not too much. I added lines to some of the 'weeping' branches and I darkened the tree trunk just above the ground, where no foliage was hanging over it. Some extended branches without foliage were added also with the pencil, using it dry on dry until I was happy with the result.

Of course there is more room for experimenting in next paintings, but I tend to do this step by step, so I can know the outcome of each new 'experiment'.

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

Bridge, Scotland (for a challenge)

This month the challenge of our regional amateur art association ("Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken") is combined with the challenge of "Ik Toon - Molenlanden". 
We have to make a new work and the theme is 'Bridge' or 'Bridging'.

In our part of The Netherlands there is a lot of water, so we have a lot of bridges but I did not want to paint one of the bridges that is familiar to everyone.

Years ago we were in Scotland for a week and we visited the beautiful nature of The Trossachs. This scene was one of the many where we all made pictures. 
In these days our son and daughter did spend the vacations with us, so there were three or four cameras working hard and now I do not remember who made which picture.

For the watercolour I have used a sketch I had made long ago using one of the pictures for my reference and did not bother to look for the original picture in the album.
For the watercolour  I decided to use a very limited palette, only two colours and the scene is reduced to its essentials: a background, the river, the river banks and the bridge.

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

Almost apple pie - just add water and lots of love

July is WorldWatercolourMonth and I always like to paint some extra watercolours during that time. There are prompts given by the organisation of this event, Doodlewash. I do not have time or inspiration for all 31 prompts but I really want to make the most of it.

One of the prompts is 'Delicious Food' and of course I can try to paint a nice meal before it is eaten but this seemed a better idea. As my husband's birthday is very near, I am gathering ingredients and recipes for cookies, pies and dinner dishes.
This is almost all you need for a great apple pie, as I have said in the title, add just a little bit of water and lots of love  and the result is an example of Delicious Food!

Years ago I wanted to try rough paper - usually I have cold pressed, medium texture paper - and I was persuaded to buy a block of a small size. I did not use it much, because my landscapes need 'a bit more space'. This little still life seemed the perfect occasion to try the rough paper and I was not disappointed.
This quality needs just a little bit of water, perfect for a still life and the texture is nice to work on. I have chosen to work with a balanced palette of orange, mauve and turquoise I have used before.

The texts on the packages are in Dutch, just like they are when I buy these ingredients.
I took great care to make the colours of the apples and eggs look as natural as possible with my limited palette. 
Unfortunately I cannot get the picture better than it is now, the background paper should be white. Both camera and computer do not cooperate as much as I would like them to.

More information (paper and paints used, size, availability, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Bird sanctuary - 2; an experiment with a limited palette

We returned from our last walk on the 'Kalmthoutse Heide'  with a lot of photographs that can be used as reference for my paintings. 
To prevent me doing the same thing over and over again, I usually start challenging myself after the first two or three paintings and here I set myself a double challenge.

I chose to work with a limited palette of only three colours. The three are selected carefully, when placed in a colour wheel made up of 12 colours, they are in the shape of an equilateral triangle. So they have a natural balance.
I have worked with this palette before and this is great for painting landscapes.

The second challenge I set myself is the high position of the horizon. 
Usually I have my horizon positioned low, like the old masters did. So now I have a lot of land to paint and very little sky.

For this double challenge I decided to work on a smaller piece of paper than usual.

The scene is the bird sanctuary I painted before, but this time a bit to the left from my first painting. There is no real path, just some parts with moss, low grass and sand that suggest there might have been a path in the near past. The tree is waiting for warmer weather to let the leaves come out and the bushes are doing the same.
In the distance are evergreen trees and bushes, in front of them are traces of other paths visible in the moss and grasses.

My limited palette may have a natural balance, it is hard to get really dark values with these three colours without making a mess of my painting. So I stopped before that could happen and decided to suggest a bit more than I did in my latest paintings.

I really enjoyed working on this painting and the lessons I learned will be used to improve the next ones.

More information (colours used, size, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

'Allerheiligen' waterfalls - a second attempt

Last autumn we were in the Black Forest - in Germany - for a short vacation. During that trip we visited the ruins and waterfalls of Allerheiligen. 

The ruins have been painted (and will be painted again) and during the vacation I already painted the waterfalls once and I promised myself that I would paint them again.
Waterfalls are not an easy subject for me, because I have to go on vacation to visit them. In our flat country there are no waterfalls to be found. At least nothing over a meter.

As I have written in my first post about these falls, the Allerheiligen waterfalls are a series of falls cascading down around the mountain. To visit them safely there are stairways and platforms beside the falling water.
At that time my knees were giving me messages about 'age' and 'not in shape for this terrain' so I stood sketching some of the falls as my husband went down a bit further to make lots of photographs. This painting is made after one of my sketches.

For this painting I chose to do a small size using only two colours. This enables me to focus on the falls; how to paint them in a way that they can still be recognized as waterfalls. On top of the scene is a small waterfall, which is mostly in the shadows of the rocks and trees surrounding the falls and the path beside them. 

As it was my goal to make a recognizable waterfall, I think I have succeeded with this painting. Of course I will have to paint much more waterfalls to improve my skills on this subject.

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

Near Wirtzfeld - Autumn colours

Back to my summer vacation in the Ardennes. 
When we were on the spot, all I could think of was the challenge to paint in shades of green, and I made a painting I was not completely happy about. You can find the blog post here.
So I decided almost immediately to paint it again, in different colours. 
A few months passed since that decision, but here is the Autumn Colour version.

Not only the colours changed, I also changed the scene a bit. I made several reference pictures and on one of them were almost all the trees and not so much of the fields. I liked the light coming from behind the tree trunks so I decided to paint that this time.
My colours are also chosen from the not-so-familiar ones with the plan to get to know them better. A few were bought on impulse because they look great on the colour chart. Now I am making them look great in a painting and that is in fact why I bought them in the first place.

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

View on Bütgenbach - evening mood

The first time I saw the church towers of Bütgenbach I already knew I wanted to paint them as they were at that moment: far away in the evening mist. 
I made some reference pictures to remember the atmosphere of that evening and I made a sketch of the scene in the brighter light of the following morning.
The colours were still very much related to the blues and greens of summer but after a week of shades of blue and green I needed a change. So I decided on a limited palette of french ultramarine, burnt sienna and violet to give the scene a different mood.

Because of the evening mist, there are not so many details visible on the towers and surrounding buildings, but this was the view that did draw my attention. 
Adding the 'highlights' to make the foreground stand out a bit more was a bit of an experiment as I did not know whether it would work in this colour scheme, but it turned out really nice!

More information about this watercolour painting can be found at my website: www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

The Gate.... now in a daylight version

The gate also deserved a daylight version, so here it is. I changed the shapes and the size of the gate a bit just for the fun of it.
I used a balanced palette of three colours here, a combination I used before and I like very much.
With these three basic colours I can mix almost all the colours needed in a landscape. 
To keep my painting clean and transparent I just have to avoid mixing all three together. 

This gate - and the versions I made earlier - is based on a gate we saw a few years ago in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. The 'real' gate was at a piece of land with only weeds and small stones in it. 
No buildings or ruins, no signs of a garden or the remains of it, no burial grounds, no factory, just a mystery! 
That is exactly why it appealed to my imagination and I am not really sure if this is the last Gate I will paint - I don't think so.

More information about this watercolour (size, colours used, etc) and the other Gates I painted can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr