Val Joly - a pencil drawing

 

Last week my husband and me were enjoying a short vacation in the North of France, at the reservoir of Val Joly. The first evening we were exploring the site where our vacation home was and we had a nice view over the lake. My husband made the reference picture for this drawing.

Using a watercolour card with rounded corners (as can be seen in the picture) I started with watercolour pencils, used water to 'awaken' the colours and added more layers of pencil for extra depth. The pencil layers above the washed pencil has more shades of green and blue than the base layer, adding details that were not there at first.

The information about the materials I have used, the size and availability of this work and - if you are interested in my original artwork - my contact information can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Thülsfelder Talsperre (Germany) - charcoal and pencil drawing

 

The last full day of our short vacation in the North of Germany we went for a walk around the Thülsfelder Talsperre, a small reservoir made to prevent nearby towns from flooding in times of heavy rains. The walk around the reservoir is only 10 kilometres so ideal for a walk. The walk is signposted and there is a lot of information about the lake, water management and the nature surrounding the little lake.

The reservoir has a dyke on the North and East, the other sides are shaped more naturally though there are dykes at a small distance. The first hours of our walk there were some dark clouds which had even darker reflections in the water. During the walk there were a lot of (reference) pictures taken, but I had to pick one that was good for a drawing to make that same afternoon. Other pictures will be used for watercolour paintings.

As said, the clouds were dark and the reflections were even darker. The opposite shore was backlit, so there were only contours visible and the reflections were equally dark. The exact shoreline was not to be seen but it is safe to assume that it is in the middle, between the bushes and their reflections. There were some small ripples in the water made by the wind or some swimming birds.  The herbs and the tree in the foreground are also only silhouettes and in fact the blue of the sky and its reflection are the only colours in this scene. 

All that makes this scene perfect for a charcoal drawing with a bit of colour added.

The result is what I hoped it would be so this was a great end to a wonderful day.

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

At the Reservoir of Bütgenbach - Ardennes

For this painting I have been searching my 'archives' of reference photographs in order to get inspired by one of them.

This scene is at the reservoir of Bütgenbach, in the Ardennes (Belgium) where I was on painting vacation twice. This scene we saw in the first year and although I did not paint it that day I made some quick pictures for later use. I have been making a charcoal drawing of a bridge that day and this was at the other side of that small bridge. 

There was a grey sky that day and only minutes after I took the pictures I used here we had to save our artworks-in-progress from a heavy rainfall. The whole group packed everything in the cars and drove back to the house where we all finished the paintings and drawings we had started 'en plein air'.

The water is a side arm of the reservoir and it is partially covered with plants of all sorts. In the background there are lots of trees and bushes, a field of magenta coloured flowers and the marshy left side of the background is filled with grasses or something that looks very much like grasses.

As this is summertime all the bushes, trees and grasses are in shades of green, only the water plants have a shade that is more distinctly blue-green. So I had a nice challenge here, but if I don't paint scenes like this at all I will never master those green, wet landscapes. I have been struggling to create depth in all that green and in the dark parts of the water, where the trees are reflected.

The water did not move much, so the reflections of the tree lines and the clouds were clearly visible. 

The bushes on the foreground were a tangled mass with some small flowers in between. I did not give them much details as that would attract too much attention.

Working on this watercolour painting was fun, even though I had set myself a challenge.

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