Deelerwoud - Along fields and roads

 

The September challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' is 'Along fields and roads' and we are asked to paint our vacation pictures, only I did not make nice pictures of fields and roads, only fields...

So I selected a nice picture of our signposted walk in the Deelerwoud last October (2021) with a field and the path we were walking in a nice composition. The background is a forest area and the trees next to the path are a welcome addition to the view, even though some of them died a long time ago. 

The grasses were already yellow, the trees still had most of their foliage and there was a nice dark sky, it rained lightly during our walk. Together this had a very nice autumnal mood and we enjoyed being there at that time. Now I am happy to remember that walk, using the pictures I made as reference for my watercolour paintings.

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

The Entrance

In  my two previous posts I have written about the estate we visited a few weeks ago and the different wrought iron fences that were to be seen from the road and the parking place. This fence must be (or may be) the main entrance to the estate of Singraven (Netherlands) as there is a road towards the building. It was closed like the others and my husband made some great reference pictures for me.

In my first post about these fences I have painted a side entry - or exit - where no road or path was blocked by the fence.
The second post was about a fence at the other side of the road, where we could enter a nice lane for a short walk.


For this painting I have made up my own composition again, so the building may be the same as in the first painting, I have changed its position again and I have also changed the amount of bushes and trees in the garden between the estate building end the fence.

The reference pictures were made when there was a lot of sunshine (for a few moments) and I have used the shadows of the small poles and the fence to create a different atmosphere for this watercolour painting.
I have used the same paper size and colour scheme as in my other paintings to connect them in more ways than only the subjects.

More information about this watercolour painting and the others I have made with the fences of this estate as sources of inspiration can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Invitation for a walk

During our short visit to the east of our country we did not explore our beautiful nature as often as we usually do. In my previous post I have already explained that this time there was a large group and we included everyone as much as possible in the plans.

This is one of the wrought iron fences we saw on the estate of Singraven. 
Compared to the one in my previous post, this one is on the other side of the road and there is an opening for those that want to make a short walk on the lanes and paths of the domain.
In fact we did enter here and made a short walk before we gathered for lunch and the drive to all our different homes.

The colour of the fence and the posts beside the gate is almost the same as the green and brown mixture of the bushes behind it and I had to look very carefully to find the shapes I had to draw.
I did take care to make the fence 'disappear' again when I painted it. 

The large trees did cast so much shadow that there are no significant 'light spots' on the grass and the lane. I have tried to show the light green of the springtime leaves on the large trees, they did manage to catch some sunlight.

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

Pathway of Dreams

This watercolour painting was made for a challenge in one of my Facebook groups. 
The January challenge in that group was "Mountains" and for a long time I thought I could not enter, because there are no mountains in my country and I do not visit mountainous landscapes during my vacations. This means that mountains are something I will have to study first, before being able to make a good painting, worthy of entering in a challenge.

But then I thought of the many 'views of Mt. Fuji' (by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai)  and decided to do something inspired by that theme, executed in my own way.
I made up a nice composition, with some trees and bushes, a road or path, a gate, some stone markers and of course the mountain.
This I painted in my own style, using a colour scheme that suggests the end of autumn or the beginning of winter.

The title of this painting refers to the gate which is a marker between the normal world and the spirit world and to the mountain itself because that is a holy mountain and an object of pilgrimage. 
Dreams or wishes are connected with the spirit world and I think that those who undertake a pilgrimage also have a dream or wish they want to be fulfilled.

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

Christmas Morning

The conclusion of Advent is Christmas - of course. After the four Sundays of Advent, with more and more light coming into the world and my paintings I just had to paint Christmas as well. Because I had used my mothers old missal as the source of information for the Gospel readings of Advent, I turned to that book again. I found that sixty years ago there were Gospel readings for Christmas night, dawn and day. The readings for night and dawn follow each other, but the Gospel for Christmas day is very different from the stories we have been reading before and is not easy to translate to a landscape painting. 

I chose to paint a landscape inspired by the Gospel reading of Christmas dawn. 
Luke 2, 15 -16; "And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger." (source of the English text is www.kingjamesbibleonline.org)

As this scene is at dawn, there is much more light. The Star is supposed to be in the sky until Epiphany and shines brightly now. On the right side of the road are fields like those where the shepherds spent the night. They have left for Bethlehem, but the remains of their fires can still be found. On the left side of the road is a town like Bethlehem could have been and some fields that might be used for agriculture. Of course this landscape is imaginary, like the ones I painted for the four Sundays of Advent.
The sky still has some of the colour of the night, so I used indigo again, but the landscape is well lit and has much more colour.

This project was really nice to work on. Indigo is a great colour to work with as it is usable for all tonalities in a landscape painting. Adding more and more colour was also coming naturally as I have painted all five paintings in order within a few weeks time.

More information about my Advent project 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