Last week, in Normandy, we had a vacation home with views on lawns and a golf court, which means lots of grass on all sides. The view on the little church was on the front side of the house, this is the back side.
The first morning I was awake and dressed (it is cold outside in the mornings) in time to make some pictures of the sunrise.
The view is showing the lawns and golf court I mentioned earlier and the apple trees that were everywhere. This is Normandy and there are apple trees wherever you look, to produce all that cider, Pommeau and Calvados for which this region is famous.
I have chosen to make a small size watercolour, just to show the colours of the sunrise and the remainder of the morning fog that could be seen just above the grass and between the trees.
The details about the paper and paint I used, the size and availability can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Sometimes I walk to my job having a great view and this time I just had to use the opportunity to make a quick picture with my phone. The picture was not perfect of course but I have made the best of it.
The walking path and bicycle path have a bend in the distance so they don't end in the 'vanishing point'. The bushes on the slope of the railroad were dark and in the shadows so I have only suggested their shapes. At the moment I took my picture I was alone on that walking path so the scene is calm.
I have used my Twilight Colours and added a yellow and a grey-blue for the colours of the sunrise and the deepest shadows. The lines of the lamp posts and the overhead of the railroad are made with a water soluble pencil, that can be applied more subtle when needed. The Twilight Colours can also give nice dark mixtures but that would have been too dark for this purpose.
I enjoyed painting this and experimenting a bit more with the colours on my palette.
More information about this watercolour painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Over a month ago my daughter Mariska and me took a bus to an arts-and-crafts event.
As we wanted to arrive as early as possible (around the opening hour) we had beautiful views from the bus.
The ride took us through the landscape of the Alblasserwaard, a landscape with fields, some cows and villages and trees in the distance. The sun was still rising and the clouds were looking great. Some of the morning mist was still visible.
Mariska took several pictures from the riding bus and this is a watercolour painting I made after one of them. There are more great pictures so more paintings will follow.
I do not need a perfect picture to paint from. As the bus was driving, the foreground is not sharp and the tree was a bit more blurry than I painted it. The clouds and the mist were visible though and that is what I needed for this one.
The Alblasserwaard is close to my home, although I do not cross it like this very often. Usually I take a motorway, the bus uses a provincial route in order to pick up passengers where possible.
This painting challenged me more than I thought it would. In fact I made the mistake to choose Burnt Umber to mix my grey instead of another brown colour. When I apply my grey mixture on wet paper, the blue and brown will flow each in their own way and give blue clouds with a brown lining. So the paper got a 'special treatment' with the shower and I started over. Still using the Burnt Umber, now on not so wet paper. The result is now what I wanted to achieve and I learned another lesson.
I like this painting, it has a bit of the mystery you can feel early in the morning on a misty field.
More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Just before sunrise on the Maasvlakte 2, in the Port of Rotterdam.
The sky is cloudy and very dark, below the clouds are shades of blue.
The big elevators for the containers in the port are standing out against the sky.
I am looking towards the west, so there is no red or yellow colour in the sky, just blues and greys.
The moment I saw this I knew I had to paint it.
For my composition I relied mostly on my memories and a little on references for the correct shapes of the elevators.
So here is the second painting with my set of Twilight Colours - the set is perfect for scenes like this! I used the red only to create the grey colours of the elevators and the port side.
More information about this painting (and my other paintings) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
