The last day of 2019 was a very foggy day. We started in the morning without a view from the windows but that got better in a few hours.
We (my husband and me) decided to go for a short walk in 'De Biesbosch', a Natural Reserve very close to where we live. This is a very wet area, formed during a flood in the year 1421 and the tides can still be experienced here.
We had a lot of mist and a bit of sunshine during our walk and at one point we could see the reeds and the creek close by, but the woodlands behind the reeds were almost the same shade of grey as the foggy sky.
There was no wind, so the water in the creek was completely still and everything was reflected as clearly as possible on such a foggy day.
Of course some reference pictures were made!
I decided to make a charcoal drawing of this scene, the shades of grey were inviting me to choose that technique.
There was another reason for charcoal, making a charcoal drawing is faster than watercolour, and I did not have the time to prepare a sheet of paper and paint a watercolour painting. That is for the weekend, as my days off from work are over.
The details about the paper I used, the size, availability and contact information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Over a month ago my daughter Mariska and me took a bus to an arts-and-crafts event.
As we wanted to arrive as early as possible (around the opening hour) we had beautiful views from the bus.
The ride took us through the landscape of the Alblasserwaard, a landscape with fields, some cows and villages and trees in the distance. The sun was still rising and the clouds were looking great. Some of the morning mist was still visible.
Mariska took several pictures from the riding bus and this is a watercolour painting I made after one of them. There are more great pictures so more paintings will follow.
I do not need a perfect picture to paint from. As the bus was driving, the foreground is not sharp and the tree was a bit more blurry than I painted it. The clouds and the mist were visible though and that is what I needed for this one.
The Alblasserwaard is close to my home, although I do not cross it like this very often. Usually I take a motorway, the bus uses a provincial route in order to pick up passengers where possible.
This painting challenged me more than I thought it would. In fact I made the mistake to choose Burnt Umber to mix my grey instead of another brown colour. When I apply my grey mixture on wet paper, the blue and brown will flow each in their own way and give blue clouds with a brown lining. So the paper got a 'special treatment' with the shower and I started over. Still using the Burnt Umber, now on not so wet paper. The result is now what I wanted to achieve and I learned another lesson.
I like this painting, it has a bit of the mystery you can feel early in the morning on a misty field.
More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
