Chapel - monochromatic

The third painting with the little chapel is a monochromatic one, I used sepia because that is a very dark colour so I can have a good range of values in my painting.
This time I added a winter tree, maybe an oak as there were lots of oak trees in the area we visited.
I have tried to paint a winter scene without any snow in it.

This is again a small size painting, mostly because my bathroom is being renewed over the past weeks and I have hidden away most of my paper to shield it from the dust that comes with these building activities. 

Another reason is of course that I really am inspired to paint this little chapel in as many imaginary landscape settings as possible and it's nice to use the same paper and size for all of these watercolour paintings.

More information about this watercolour painting (materials used, size, availability, etc) and the other paintings I made with the chapel can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com  

Painting week in the Ardennes - Path in Sepia

The second painting day (painting week in the Ardennes with Buitenatelier - see my previous post for details) we drove to a field not far from our vacation home. 
There was a lot to see and paint here, fields, hills, cows, a flower field, bushes...

I found a small path into the forest and decided to paint the lines of the trees, as a contrast to the round shapes of the bushes and the curves of the path.
The theme for this week was Contrast, so I decided on a contrast in shapes for today.

In order to make that very visible, I decided to make a monochromatic watercolour using Sepia. That is a colour I am not so familiar with so I worked carefully, adding colour and shapes only after the paint I already applied was dried completely. With the sun and wind I never had to wait long though.

Again I made a cadre with tape on my watercolour paper and filled that completely with paint.
Once again this way of working was not my usual way of painting, but I had a lot of fun working like this and I am happy with the result.

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

Ardennes -day 3

Today was supposed to be overcast,  but we had lots of sunshine. The painting location was a field nearby, with trees, bushes, flower fields and even cows on one side.
I chose to paint trees - no surprise there - and the contrast is made by painting monochromatic. I have done that before and now I decided to work with sepia, a colour I am not so familiar with.
Again we were invited to 'frame' our paintings with tape and fill that space with our subject.
This was a nice experience and I am happy with today's result!

I will post better pictures of the paintings I made and will make later this week after I returned home.

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