Sallandse Heuvelrug - Coniferous trees in backlight

 

  

This time of the year, the sun is not as high in the sky as it is in summer, so it is possible to make a picture of a tree in backlight early in the afternoon. My husband Peter was inspired by the scene and made several pictures - that inspired me to paint. Of course my watercolour painting is not meant to be an exact copy of the beautiful pictures my husband made.

The reference pictures were made during one of our walks in the Natural reserve 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' in the eastern part of our country.

The picture I made from my watercolour painting is not perfect, in this season it is really  hard to get the colours right. The picture does give a good impression though and maybe the one I uploaded to my Flickr page is a bit better. 

For this painting I chose a large size paper so I had all the space I needed for a nice clouded sky, a landscape with moorland, woodland in the background and the trees of course.

The picture I used for reference had the sun exactly behind the trees, so there was as good as nothing of the needles and branches 'lost' in the light. The moorland is very dark in the picture because of it being in backlight, I wanted to change that to how the landscape looks when you see it with your own eyes.

I did use brighter colours for the sky and landscape than the reference picture had, the trees are painted in very dark colours, as close to black as I could mix them.

The result of my efforts is what I hoped for, a watercolour that suggests the atmosphere of a sunny autumn day in a beautiful landscape.

The information about the paper and paints I have used, the size of this work and its availability can all be found in the link at the 'Galerie' page of my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

'Sallandse Heuvelrug' - crossroad within sight

The mystery of the moors in foggy weather really intrigued me. 
Most of the times when we are hiking I am not the person holding and using the camera, this time I made a lot of reference pictures because I kept seeing things that were inviting me to paint.
As it was not only foggy but also cold we did not stop for sketches, only pictures.

At this point we were walking towards a crossroad - as can be seen by the trees standing there. A bit beyond the crossroad the trees were gone again as if only that point was to be made seen by the trees.
In winter the heather plants are dark and brown, the grasses are golden yellow and the trees are dark because of the moist. At this point the sand was a bit red - not yellow or the grey colour I saw in other spots.
Therefore I could use a limited palette of four colours, something I feel very comfortable about. The haziness caused by the foggy circumstances gives me a good exercise in wet-in-wet painting, creating even softer edges than I normally do. Only the foreground is a bit sharper than the rest of the scene, but I really tried not to overdo that sharpness.
I do not have the ambition to make a photo-realistic painting, I try to paint how it felt to be at that spot, at that moment, in that weather, in that season.
With this watercolour painting I think I am very close to what I wanted to paint.

More information about this painting (size, colours and paper used, etc) and the others I made inspired by the 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Sallandse Heuvelrug - the road to.....?

In the mist everything feels a bit different compared to a bright day. Maybe I would not have liked the scenes I painted so much when I had seen them on a clear day, with lots of sunshine and the clouds high above us in the sky.
To find that out, I should revisit the 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' on a sunny day, maybe even in summer.
For now it happened to be foggy and mysterious when we walked that path over the moors and I was inspired to make reference pictures or to ask for pictures to be taken (my husband Peter made this one for me) and to make plans for paintings.

This painting was made after I returned home, it is a larger size than the previous ones I posted (with the 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' for inspiration). 
We were not taking the road I painted, so I do not know where it will end. 
The trees are pine trees, planted about a century ago for wood-production purposes. Many of these pines have already been harvested - the stumps in the foreground are the remains of those trees.
Further away may be more trees, bushes or...? It is hidden by the fog.
The grasses and heather on the foreground are in their winter colours, yellow and brown.

For this painting I used the same colours I did before, I only added a green shade for the pines. 

Working on a larger sheet of paper was somehow easier for me than the small sizes, that is probably because this is my habitual size of paper. And being back in my studio was also very nice.
We have made three walks in the Natural Reserve, so I do have some more pictures to paint from, but as my vacation is over I  don't have the time to paint (and post) daily any more.

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

Foggy weather on the moors - watercolour painting

That walk over the foggy moorlands of our Natural Reserve 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' was really inspiring me to paint the scenes we saw. 
As I wrote in my previous post, the fog stayed all day, but at some moment a very pale sun came visible - for a short while. I managed to make a nice picture that would serve me as a reference for that moment.
At that time we were at a spot with a little more trees in the neighborhood and several bushes a little further away. The yellow grasses were separated by tracks and patches of dark earth.

I made this watercolour - a small size as we were still in our 'vacation home' - to compare this technique with the charcoal drawing I made earlier.
For this watercolour painting I used the same three colours that were used to make the underpainting for the charcoal drawing. Using French Ultramarine and Vandyke Brown I can make the grey of the foggy sky and the bushes that are further away. The trees close by are made with the same colours, only now a stronger mixture. Gold Ochre is for the wintery grasses, for the fields in the distance made a bit more grey with the Ultramarine.
There were some clouds visible and the outline of the sun is not so strong, this is typical for this kind of weather in The Netherlands.

Once again I had fun painting this scene and it was nice to compare both techniques. 
I still don't know which I prefer - which one I will use in the future may depend on my mood.

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

Foggy weather on the moors - charcoal drawing

The second day of our stay in the Natural Reserve 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' we had foggy weather all day long. Nevertheless we went for a walk on the moors. 
The fog was not too thick, so we could see a nice bit of the landscape around us. 
We took time to make lots of pictures, the atmosphere is really special in these weather conditions. 

This is a mixed media drawing I made in our vacation home, a watercolour underpainting in the colours of the fog and the dried grass that could be seen in this part of the area with a charcoal drawing on the dried underpainting.
With the use of the charcoal I tried to show the bushes and trees that are faded by the mist as well as the foreground of grasses, heather and some small trees.
The result is not as foggy as the reference picture I made, but still the weather conditions can be seen. It has a nice atmosphere. 
Of course I am still experimenting with this mix of watercolour underpaintings and charcoal drawing.

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

Sunset on the 'Sallandse Heuvelrug'

Last week - between Christmas and New Year's Eve - we went for a short vacation to one of the Natural Reserves of The Netherlands; the 'Sallandse Heuvelrug'.
The next bit of text is information I copied from the English Wikipedia page about the region:
The Sallandse heuvelrug is a  moraine, created in the one but last glaciation, Saalien, 150.000 years ago. During the Holocene forests started to develop, but after the growth of the human population, these forests had been cut. 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.

We had visited this National Reserve only once, so we decided to spend more time here to walk, explore and make pictures. 
The first day of our visit the weather was fine, we had some clouds and sometimes a clear sky. As the sun sets early in winter, we had beautiful views of the colouring of the sky through the branches of the trees. 
The reference picture for this watercolour was made by me.

I painted this watercolour in the evening in our vacation home. Because of that it is a small size and not a very challenging subject. Just a nice little painting to reflect the mood of the afternoon walk we made.
There were more pictures of course, with scenes that need a bit more thought and preparation before I paint them. So there is more to come!

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

On the moors

When we visited a small part of the Veluwe called the Renderklippen last autumn, we made quite a few pictures. I already used a lot of them to paint from and this time I used two pictures my daughter Mariska made. 
We were standing relatively high on top of the moraine and she made a series of pictures to create a panoramic view of the area. 
From that panoramic view I chose my composition.
This scene shows a bit of the path over the moraine and through the field. As it was a foggy day, the moors and the trees in the distance are hazy, which adds to the feeling you get when walking in a landscape shaped in the last Ice Age.

More information about this painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.co.nr 

At the prehistoric burial mounds

Our beautiful National Reserve 'De Veluwe' has been the inspiration of my latest paintings. It is not over yet!
As I mentioned before we were in the vicinity of a moraine, a leftover from the last Ice Age. A lot of the low hills in the area are part of that moraine, but this scene is a bit different. 
The area of the Renderklippen also contains some prehistorical burial mounds. 
They are 4000 to 5000 years old and still visible in the landscape, situated beautifully on the edge of a small moor. The foggy weather made the site even more mysterious.

The reference photo was made for me by my husband Peter.
More information about this watercolour (size, colours and paper used) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr 

When the fog lifts....

The first time we saw this landscape it was foggy weather. So when the fog lifted after a few days we could see much more of the autumn colours this part of the Veluwe has to offer. And we all had a very pleasant surprise!
The sky was still cloudy, but opening up with bright red/orange and patches of blue.
The trees were changing from green to a reddish brown and the heather lost their flowers but still had a lot of violet to be seen.
As I explained earlier, we were in a moraine so the landscape is not as flat as the rest of The Netherlands. We were walking on the top of the hills and looking at the scene below us when my daughter Mariska made the reference photo I used for this painting.

More information about this painting (size, colours used) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr 

Foggy weather on the moors

The fog I painted before lasted a few days, so here is another watercolour inspired by that special atmosphere you get in that kind of weather.
We were walking in a small part of the Veluwe called Renderklippen, a moraine left over from the last Ice age. There is a lot of variation in that landscape, I already painted the woodlands, now you can see the moors. They are all small patches, but to me that makes it all the more attractive for a walk - in an hour or two you can visit various landscapes!
Of course when there is someone with a camera in your company, the walk tends to last longer - but we all see much more of the landscape we are exploring.
The reference photo for this painting was taken by my daughter Mariska.

More information (size, colours used) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr