Reflection, Iceland

 

Improving my skills in painting water also means painting reflections in water and our teacher Ad van Aart had the perfect picture for me to paint from (thank you!). 

This is another scene in Iceland and looking at all these pictures (to select the perfect one to paint from) made me want to visit Iceland as well. Maybe that can happen in the future.

The reflection in the picture was almost a perfect mirror image, so the challenge was to show that slight imperfection in my painting, but I should not overdo it. The black volcanic rock still is another challenge, as I should not overdo that either.

Of course things were not perfect at first, but watercolour can be forgiving and I could remove some of the blackness that was too much and the result is a landscape painting of which I am proud.

The rock in the foreground was added last, we decided this rock should be in the painting (it was there in the reference picture) because it improves the whole scene.

This painting was quite a struggle, it took me a long time to complete this one. Because of the hot weather we had all week I took my time, there was no need to rush things and ruin a painting. Maybe the weather was also slowing me down for another reason, the drying time of a wet surface was longer than expected on such a hot day. 

As said, I am happy with this painting, the result is worth the effort I put into it and I definitely have learned something while painting this scene.

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

The Trossachs - view in the Duke's Pass

Twelve years ago, on a short summer vacation in Scotland we visited a lot of beautiful scenery, great views and some tourist attractions.
Driving the Trossachs Trail we stopped at The Duke's Pass to see the views - and to make photographs of course. The whole family was there, each with a camera so there were lots of photographs for the album I usually make after such vacations. 
From that album I selected a few photographs of the same mountains and valleys - each a bit different from the other. 

The dark clouds above the mountains were great for a painting so I have tried to make them as moody as possible.
The mountains in the Scottish Highlands are not completely covered with forest and woodland, as are the high hills of The Ardennes or the mountains of the Sauerland, which are situated more southern than Scotland. In the Trossachs the mountains are not completely bare, there are grasslands and fields with mosses that give the area a nice green appearance in summer. Unfortunately I do not know anything about the other seasons.
For all that green I have mixed, layered, placed shadows until I was convinced I had achieved the same moody atmosphere as I had given to the clouds.

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

The Trossachs - charcoal drawing

Twelve years ago we were in Scotland for a week of vacation. At that time 'we' meant my husband, son, daughter and me and we all had a camera, so that vacation was well documented with photographs. Two of the cameras were still analog, using films.
We did not go far into the Highlands, but we did see a lot of the area called The Trossachs, as we went for rides and signposted walks not far from our vacation home.
One day I was going through the album of that summer vacation and I was inspired by the pictures of the mountains and clouds we took that week.
There are lots of mountains in The Trossachs and at one view point we could make pictures all around us, so I just had to pick the most inspiring point of view. 

Working with an album full of photographs that cannot be replaced beside me is not very relaxing, so I decided to do a charcoal drawing. Charcoal is a dry material and it can be brushed off when an 'accident' should happen. 
With those precautions taken, nothing happened of course.

Looking at several pictures I came to this composition. One of the pictures showed more details of the mountains, another picture showed the clouds, a third picture showed the scene from another angle and more.

What attracted me here was the dark sky full of clouds and wide view of the mountains and the valleys between them.

More information about this charcoal drawing can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

View on Koper (Slovenia)

My son Martijn likes to travel the world. He does not need much of an excuse to pack his bag and leave for a short trip to visit a place he has not seen before. This scene is from a journey he made a few years ago, mosty using trains for transport. He visited several countries in the eastern parts of Europe and made lots of photographs for his own memory and he always kindly allows me to use these landscape photographs as reference for my watercolours and other artwork.

This time I was inspired by a view on Koper in Slovenia. There are not so many buildings visible in this scene but the mountains in the background make this an inspiring view. The church tower is a nice landmark here and I decided that this had to be my 'point of interest' - if possible. I have not been simplifying the view of the roofs and houses much, I guess my son had a high standing point when he made the photographs I used. 
These buildings are built in a way that is not common in The Netherlands, so I had to concentrate well while painting them. Shadows, angles, roofs or streets are not what I am used to see in daily life so I cannot rely on my memory and have to work with my sketch - with lots of notes written on it - close by.

I have been painting this in two steps, the first step was wet-in-wet for the sky, the mountains and the 'details' in the background area, and the second step was wet-on-dry for the buildings, the trees between the buildings and the details. 
Usually I paint the whole painting wet-in-wet first with details wet-on-dry and that works very well for most landscapes. This little town asked for another approach and I am pleased with the result.

More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

After the rains - morning in the mountains

Last autumn my husband and me had a short vacation in the Black Forest, Germany. I have already made and published some watercolour paintings I made during and after that trip. On the way home we started early - as it is over six hours by car to get home - and we stopped for this sight. In the night and the early morning it rained and now the water that had fallen was rising up to the sky again in the form of mist. In the mountains that is a great sight especially for people like us, who are living in a flat country.
On my request my husband Peter stopped the car (in a parking place of course), opened the window and made some photographs.
We were near a hamlet situated in a bend in the road, so there were some buildings in front of the forests, the mountains and the mist.

Because I wanted to lay emphasis on the tranquility of the scene I have 'forgotten' to show the part of the road that was visible and added some bushes to the ones that were already there. The house on the left is also a bit altered and has got a more traditional 'Black Forest' facade.

Once again I have not been using green from the tube, but mixed my greens using several blue, grey and yellow paints. Because it is autumn I have added the yellows in pure form to the trees and bushes. The pine trees are evergreen of course and most of them are emerging above the mist. Only those on the far left are hidden behind the mist as that mountain ridge is much further away.
The smoke from one of the chimneys is highlighted with Chinese White.

Once again I had not stretched my paper before painting on it, and again I had some small difficulties. I have been giving this method a second try but I have found out that it is better for me - and my painting habits - to soak and stretch my paper before painting. 

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

Ruins of All Saints'Abbey - Allerheiligen, Germany

At 'Allerheiligen' waterfalls was also a monastery, now in ruins. During our trip to the falls we also visited the ruins and the small museum and took some pictures. 

The next bit of information was found - amidst a lot more information - on a wikipedia page 

According to the tradition, the foundation date was 1192, and the site of the building, at 620 metres above sea level in the upper valley of the Lierbach near Oppenau, was determined by a donkey which threw off a sack of money at this remote and inaccessible spot. In the same year a wooden chapel was built, which was gradually extended to be a Premonstratensian monastery.
Large fires, in 1470 and 1555, had already destroyed parts of the premises. In 1804, a last fire, started when a bolt of lightning struck the church tower, finished the job.
Not until the end of the 19th century, when tourism finally reached the Lierbach valley and its waterfalls, were any steps taken to secure what was left of the ruins, which were then put into the condition they are in today.
Also now on the site are a cafe and a small museum. Below the ruins are the All Saints'waterfalls.

Those ruins are really great for a painting! We only have a few pictures (camera battery low) but I intend to use them as good as possible.
On the slopes of the mountains are mostly fir trees but closer to the buildings was a group in bright autumn colours - just behind the ruins. So this painting is about the autumn colours and the contrast with the ruined building. 
Because of all the dirt and mold the structure of the ruins was hardly visible, especially the tower is hard to see clearly.
The tree trunks were dark because of the moist, and as a lot of leaves had fallen already they were standing out nicely against the bright coloured foliage.

I have tried to paint the decay of the ruins standing out against the life in the trees. To show some of the details I have also used some of my Graphitint pencils, they have colours that fit right into this atmosphere.

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

On the road - in the Ardennes

We drove through the Ardennes and came upon this nice scene. 
A railroad, a little building, bushes, grasses, trees and the mountains in the background.
All in autumn colours, waiting to be sketched. I also took some reference pictures, but never used them.

I wanted to make a charcoal drawing inspired by this scene, but only black and white would take away the friendly feeling. So I made an under-painting with watercolour in autumn colours. The watercolour paper has a nice structure to work on with charcoal.
The result of the under-painting will always be a bit of a surprise. This time there was a nice surprise to work with.

This is a small size painting, I brought only smaller sizes of paper with me on vacation.
When I am painting in the 'vacation home' I don't have the same amount of space I have in my studio. And I have to be careful with the furniture in that place as it is not mine.
That is why I choose the small sizes, they are easier to manage in such circumstances.

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

Coffee with a view

This autumn my husband and me were on a short vacation again. This time we wanted to go a bit further from home than last year so on the way we had to make some (coffee) stops. The last one was on the parking place near Monswiller in France, just before crossing the border to Germany. The coffee was nice and so was the view from our table.
Because there was a small construction zone at the end of the parking place I only made a sketch, no reference picture. 

The church tower did catch my attention. It was visible from behind some bushes and was high enough to be seen above the mountains in the distance. Houses were visible around the church and the village also has some trees. 
The village is situated in a small valley but the higher parts were showing themselves, almost asking to be sketched and painted.

I decided to use warm autumn colours again and the paper I used is new for me. 
I have bought a small size block of Arches paper in  a special offer and decided to try that on vacation. This really is great paper!

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

Renggchäppeli - a mountain chapel in Switzerland

The reference photo for this one was taken by my son Martijn, as he walked in the area of the Pilatus mountain (Hergiswil, Switzerland) last winter. There is even a Christmas tree in front of the chapel! He gave me the name of the mountain, the pass and the village where he had been walking. Looking on the internet made me find the name of the chapel and that there has been a chapel on that spot since the year1567.

Showing a fence and some paths, the composition of the picture needed no modification, I only cropped it in order to get more emphasis to the chapel. 
As it was winter, the trees and bushes are bare, only some fir trees are still green. 
The scene is dominated by the birches and their fallen leaves that are giving a nice orange-brown colour to the mountainside in the background.

Painting this scene was fun! As I am not so very familiar with mountains, I thought it would be more of a challenge to me but I did not encounter great problems with this one.

More information (colours and paper used, size etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.co.nr 

The Gorge - now as a charcoal drawing

The watercolour painting I made before was not really the painting I wanted to paint.
The subject may be a bit too much for watercolour: with both the massive mountains and the foggy atmosphere in the distance together in a painting one of those is bound to go wrong somehow. 
Or maybe I just need more years of experience.

But I really wanted to paint this scene!
So if watercolour does not work, then I have to try this in another technique. 
I got my charcoal and a Conté pencil (in sepia) and started to work on the Gorge again. Working with both materials together is something I tried only once, but drawing this was not hard to do. Well, the technical part wasn't. 
The subject is still not easy for me and that might just be because I live in an very flat country.

The reference photo was taken by my son Martijn when he visited Taiwan a few years ago. As I described in my post with the watercolour painting in it, he told me about the clouds hanging so low that the tops of the mountains were invisible and the atmosphere in the gorge was muggy.  

More information about this drawing and the watercolours I made of Taroko Gorge can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr 

The Gorge

The reference picture for this one (taken by my son Martijn) has been waiting to be painted for almost four years now. When my son showed me the pictures he had taken in Taroko Gorge, Taiwan I made a watercolour of one of them within a few weeks.
He told me about his riding a bike in that landscape with clouds hanging so low that he could not see the top of the mountains and the sound of the river everywhere. 
Somehow he could not really catch that atmosphere with his camera and I accepted the challenge to paint it. At that moment I succeeded doing that and I let the other pictures rest for a while.
Now I felt it was time for another try. I decided to use another green as base for all the shades of green I had to paint. That fog is not as easy as is seems - but that may also depend on the colours and paper I am using now.  (I did not use these four years ago) 
Because of all the moist in the air there is nothing with really sharp outlines, yet all the structures are visible. Lots of water on my paper do help in achieving that atmosphere, but with caution as it's easily overdone.
Working on this one I did learn some more things about the colours on my palette - as is one of my goals for this year.

More information about this watercolour (and the one I painted a few years ago) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr 

Twilight Colours!

The special edition colours by Winsor&Newton Professional were too tempting.
I already had the Smalt (Dumont's Blue) and I never use black colours, so I bought Sanguine Red, Quinacridone Violet, Aqua Green and Cobalt Green Deep. 
It was a challenge to find something to paint  for an average reference photo does not have (all) those nice colours. Last winter we were in the train that rides alongside the river Douro at the time of sunset and my daughter Mariska made a lot of pictures. 
I decided to use one of them, a picture I had not painted before. 
The sunset was really nice and reflected in the river beautifully, I just had to change the colours a bit. The mountains were all black because of the strong backlight, but I do remember seeing detail in them so I painted them that way.

Getting used to a new set of colours is not done with just one painting so I expect to have a lot of fun with this in the near future!

More information about this watercolour and the others I made after our winter trip to Portugal last year can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr

Connemara - as I imagined it would be

Many years ago there was a song by Michel Sardou called  "Les lacs du Connemara" that created an atmosphere of barren, unforgiving nature. Ever since then I imagined the landscape of the Connemara to be like that, but unfortunately I never saw it.
Last spring my son and daughter-in-law went on a short trip to Ireland and brought back a lot of beautiful pictures and amongst them some nice ones of the landscape of the Connemara. They allowed me to paint from their pictures, so here is the first one!
I was attracted by the clouds, the lake and most of all the mountains in the distance that really create that same atmosphere I remember from that song. 
This picture taken by my daughter-in-law Claudia really shows the Connemara as I imagined it would be!

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