Almost two years ago my husband and me had a short vacation in The Black Forest in Germany and we visited the ruins of Allerheiligen. We made some pictures and I made watercolour paintings. The first watercolour I made had the colours as they were, and the yellow tree did look great in reality, in the reference picture and not so great in the watercolour painting. The painting was laid aside and I tried again with another palette. That second painting pleased me more.
Last summer, during my painting vacation I was introduced to 'painting over' and made some nice personal versions of pages from an atlas.
We also did 'metamorphosis' paintings, with a simple painting to start from and adding new elements each next version.
For this painting I have combined these two ideas. I took the watercolour painting and started drawing using my Conté Sketching Crayons, adding some dark areas to the ruins and changing the shape and quantity of the surrounding bushes and trees.
In this way I have made the yellow tree a part of the background instead of something that did not belong in that place.
The added plants and bushes make this place look more abandoned.
This version pleases me much more than the original painting (which does not exist any more) and now I have come closer to the atmosphere I wanted for this scene.
More information about this painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
One of the workshops our teacher Ad van Aart had prepared for us was called 'Übermalungen' - or Painting over.
We were encouraged to take pictures from books or magazines he had brought for that purpose an to paint over them, in a reaction to the subject of that picture. Usually books and magazines are printed on very, very smooth paper, so I could not easily paint over them with my watercolours. The other participants to this painting vacation used acrylics or oils, so they did not have that problem.
My pencils would work though, so I took out all my pencils and started looking for a page or picture that attracted my attention.
I ended up taking atlas pages, one for the colours, one for the map on it.
The blue colours of this map of the South Pole were inviting to draw anything that would come to my mind. I started out cutting the edges and glueing the atlas page to a sheet of my own paper. I added some of the darker blue shapes to the white paper as if the map continues there. The South Pole itself just asked for the signpost with directions to some random capitals (India, Mongolia, Uganda and Great Britain) and the violet one with the little star in it which is for me.
On this map I could draw the road I had taken on my way to Milonga. The road is marked with my stops for gasoline, coffee, some rest, taking pictures (the Abbaye St Michel) and the residence of Milonga, where I had been painting in the days before this workshop.
Of course this was not exactly over-painting, but I have done as much as possible with the materials I had at hand and luckily the whole group appreciated my efforts.
I did enjoy making the plans for these 'works' and executing them and the results are as I hoped they would be.
More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
