Hawthorn berries

After I have been painting flowers last week and one more after returning home I was looking for inspiration again while we were walking in a park. There were not many flowers left and the berries on the bushes were attracting my attention. That is why I made some reference pictures of the fruits of the hawthorn bushes we were passing.
I like the hawthorn bushes, in springtime they have wonderful flowers, the whole bush seems to turn white and their fruits are early as well, now is the end of summer in our country (Netherlands) and the bushes and trees of the hawthorn are already showing more red fruits than green leaves in some places.

Using my reference pictures I have been making a composition of the shapes of some of the leaves and some groups of berries. For my colour scheme I decided on a mixture of reds and browns to make it look like an autumn painting.

The background was painted first in a few layers and I already took care to leave a light spot where the group of berries would be painted.
The composition was drawn on my background - I really do draw this again, so mistakes and corrections are possible and I can adapt my composition to the size of my paper when that is necessary.
Using the colours of my background and one extra shade of red I painted all the leaves, berries, bits of branches and of course I added shadows and saved the highlights.

These last few weeks I am exploring the colour combinations I can make with the paints that are in my collection. I like to paint using harmonious colour schemes and though these kind of paintings often need a contrasting colour for depth, shadows or defining shapes I am happy that most of the paintings I have made these last weeks are what I hoped them to be or sometimes even better.

The details about paper, paints and size of this watercolour painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Hydrangea - shades of red

These Hydrangea flowers are also in the garden of Milonga, where I was last week for a painting vacation. These flowers intrigue me very much, mostly because the large four leaf shapes on the outside are not flowers at all. They are there to seduce the insects to come to the plant and the five pointed shapes in the middle are the real flowers, waiting to be fertilised by those insects. 

I have sketched some of the 'fake flowers' ans some of the shapes in the heart of the structure, the flower buds and some of the star shaped 'real flowers' to make a nice composition for a red painting.
This time I made the background in shades of red and I had to use three layers of watercolour paint before it was to my liking. In the middle was to be a source of light, this is different from the paintings I made earlier this week, where the light came from one of the corners.

Our teacher Ad van Aart helped me find the right composition for this background and advised during the making of the painting. I had to add some more flower shapes on the edges of my painting and added a light wash of yellow to make the light source warm.

Even if this is only one week, I am learning fast and I really am happy with the result of this experiment. I never thought I would be painting flowers every day and enjoying it but this is what happened to me during this painting vacation. 
There is one more painting to come that I made in Milonga, but at home I will have to explore this theme a bit more, there are a lot of nice colour combinations and compositions that have not been tried yet.

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