Pendulum with shells - a watercolour painting

 

The drawing of the little pendulum with shells I made 'en plein air' in a nice garden last week inspired me to a watercolour painting. Using the drawing as my reference I made a painting with a bit more colour in the background, just like I sometimes do when painting flowers or mushrooms.

My palette is different from the landscapes or my tree scenes, I wanted to use the pinks I have for this painting. 

The dimensions of the paper are just right for this pendulum and I enjoyed painting it.

The information about the materials I used, the size of this painting and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog. If you are interested in my original artwork, please contact me.

Pendulum with shells - a pencil drawing

 

In  my previous post I mentioned the day of plein-air painting and drawing with some members of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' in a large garden in the Alblasserwaard (The Netherlands).

Not only the bog oak inspired me, there were also some pendulums with shells, used as scarecrows in that garden. I never made a painting or drawing of shells before, so I decided to make a small size drawing of one of them.

My seat was close to the pendulum and I did the drawing without use of a reference picture, just as 'plein-air' is meant to be. Of course there is a reference picture just in case I want to do another drawing or painting about these shells.

The first layer of pencil was 'awakened' with some water, only the shells. After that more layers of pencil were added to the shells. The branch/stick that did hold the pendulum in place has only one layer of pencil, no watter added. The black cord that was used to tie the shells was drawn with a graphite pencil.

This little still life was made just for fun, 'because I can' and I an happy with the result.

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

North Sea beach at low tide

 

A few days ago I did see a challenge announced on a FaceBook page that needed an abstract watercolour painting. A few hours later we were walking on the North Sea beach at low tide and the wave patterns in the sand inspired me to make reference pictures, to be used for an abstract (-ish) painting. Abstract painting is not my usual style so it is no surprise that I have used an example from nature for my painting.

In the patterns were fragments of shells and other things that wash up at high tide and I wanted to include these as well in the painting.

So I made a rough drawing of the wave patterns and masked the shell fragments with masking fluid, let that dry and started painting. 

It took several layers of paint to make the sand look like wet sand and after all had dried I took off the masking fluid and added some colour to the shell fragments.

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