After sunset - harbour mouth

 

Last summer we went for a walk along the beach at the time of sunset and I have already made several watercolours using the reference pictures I have made that evening. After sunset we drove a bit further to see the harbour mouth, or the entrance to the Port of Rotterdam. We still were on the Maasvlakte.

At that time the tide retreated so there were not many ships in sight. Those that were visible were little spots on the horizon.

Much better visible are the Southern or Green harbour light on the side of the Maasvlakte and far away the Northern or Red harbour light on the Pier of Hoek van Holland. These colours could not be seen any more when we were there, it was too dark and they were back lit by the colours of the sunset.

The sun was already behind the horizon but the colours in the sky were still great. It was a calm day and we were very lucky to have such great views. This very calm atmosphere is what I wanted to paint this time and I chose a paper with a rough texture, so the colours of the sunset could blend better than they would have on paper with a finer texture. Because the scene was back lit, the foreground and the rock structure under the harbour light are dark masses without contrast or shadows. Both are made out of basalt blocks but that cannot be seen in the light conditions of the moment I was there.

As said, I wanted to paint a very calm after-sunset mood and I am happy with the result.

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

Church on the river - winter mood

 

The little church on the river Waal did inspire me to paint it in more than one composition, as I wrote in my previous post. In that post I also wrote about the church itself and why I decided to paint it more than once.

This time the reflections in the river are not important for my composition, instead I painted the church in a winter mood using the colours of the sky to get that particular atmosphere. Of course I could have painted a very dramatic skyscape, but our winters often have very calm days with only a few clouds in the sky that disappear within a few hours after sunrise. 

That was the calm winter mood I wanted to paint and I chose my colours carefully. The trees are bare now so there is a tangle of branches in different shades of brown. The bushes, both beside the church as well as in the foreground are more dense and I chose different shades for them. The riverside still has the dyke but most of its vegetation is resting in winter, only some bushes and shadows are visible. There is a reflection in the river, but that is not the most important part of this composition, so it is only suggested with a minimal amount of colour.

It is a winter morning and the lights in the church are on - maybe it's a Sunday, maybe the volunteers are cleaning up or decorating for a festivity, everything is possible.

Painting a winter scene from imagination while it's end of summer (all the trees I can see from my window are still green and the sky is mostly grey) is challenging but I am really happy with the result.

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

Church on the river

 

During my painting vacation we went to the river Waal for inspiration. We stayed a few hours to make sketches and pictures for future reference. Last painting vacation I did chose a theme for myself and I used the picture I made of a wild teasel for a drawing.

Of course there was more to see than only a wild teasel and I have made reference pictures and sketches inspired by the views of the river and a side stream with beautiful trees and bushes. On the other bank of the river I could see a small church - when I was in the right spot - and I made a sketch of that church as well. It was too far away for a picture, so I only have the sketch and my memories of the scene. I have tried to find the church on a map and I found that it is in fact very far from the riverside. To compose a landscape using the sketch as my guide I will have to use the church, the trees and bushes behind it and a bit of the dyke in front of the building and create an imaginary scene with these elements.

When I was there, it was still summer, with a blue sky and the trees and bushes were in shades of green, hardly distinguishable from each other. The paintings I want to make will have the colour scheme I feel like at that moment and I will be using the black-and-white sketch to determine the proportions of the church, the trees and the bushes I have been drawing.

Today I wanted to paint after that sketch and I have chosen to paint some reflections in the river as well, so the horizon is high in my composition and there is a lot of room for the water of the river.  I wanted some colour in my painting so I have made an imaginary autumn scene.

The results are what I hoped for - and even a bit better - so I will make more paintings using this sketch as my inspiration.

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

Kalmthoutse Heide - August

 

Now is the time of the year that the heather is in bloom so we went for a walk on the 'Kalmthoutse Heide', a protected Natural Reserve that is mostly in Belgium but crosses the border with The Netherlands in the Western parts of the Reserve. Because of the various lockdowns we had over the last year and a half, we had not visited the Kalmthoutse Heide for a long time.

We made the signposted walk that was our first in that area and we could see some differences - nature did not really suffer during the lockdowns. Of course I made several (reference) pictures of the heather in full bloom and some other nice views.

One of these pictures is used for this watercolour. The clouds were really dark, we had rain twice during the walk and because of the grey sky the trees also looked like dark shapes without much contrast. Of course I did not paint every little flower on every patch of heather, I prefer to paint an impression of the landscape and the viewer is welcome to imagine the details. 

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

Maasvlakte - sunset 3

 

During our walk by the shoreline at the Maasvlakte a few weeks ago I made a lot of reference pictures of the setting sun and I have already painted some watercolours. I did not make all the pictures standing up a bit from the waterline, I also made some pictures with a lower viewpoint, as low as I could get in a comfortable way (I wanted to stay dry and I had to get up without too much help) and for this watercolour I used one of those pictures.

There are some sandbanks a bit further away and these are only distinguishable from this point of view because there are no ripples. These sandbanks are not covered with water but very wet (almost quicksand) and they reflect the sunlight even better than the seawater around them.

The sun is almost touching the horizon and where the water is shallow the reflection of the sunlight is beautiful. The dark shapes are the waves rolling in, in backlight. I was crouching on a sandbank so there was water all around me - I did not want the beach to be visible in the reference picture.  After making a few pictures we had to leave, the sand was still too wet to hold us for a long time.

The painting is inspired by the reference picture and my memories of that walk so it is not an exact copy of reality (that's why it is a painting). 

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

Maasvlakte - Sunset 2

 

Last week we (my husband and me) went to see the sunset at the nearest beach, the Maasvlakte (Netherlands) and I have already painted a watercolour after the reference pictures I had made and made a blog post about that painting and a small description of the landscape we found there.

This scene is as the sunset was seen from the dunes, where we sat down for a while to find some shelter from the wind. From that relatively high spot I made several pictures which showed a very broad view of the landscape because I used my phone, which has a wide angle lens. The advantage of this is that I can select any part of the picture for my painting as these pictures are very high quality - so 'zooming in' causes no problems with losing the high definition of the image.

For this painting I was inspired by the sunset colours (no surprise here), not only in the sky and the reflections in the water, but also on the sand of the dunes. In broad daylight the sand is almost white, but in these light conditions even the sand had a red colour which I like very much. I enjoyed it to paint this and find the right colour because there was also a shadow on the sand, cast by the single line of beachgrass that we passed on our way to a soft spot to sit down. 

The footsteps show we were not the first to find a resting place in that area during that day. These footsteps are softened a bit in the painting, because they are not my subject, but do make the composition more interesting. 

As the tide was retreating there still was a lot of water between the sandbanks forming little streams catching the last sunlight forming some very nice dark and light contrasts. In fact this is one of the things that made me choose this part of the reference picture for my painting.

Compared to my previous painting, the sunset colours are all more yellow-orange, that is of course because the sun was still higher when I made the reference picture.

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

Maasvlakte - sunset

 

For my husband and me Summer vacation has already started as we don't have to go to work when the children don't go to school. This means we have time to go to the beach to see the sunset when the weather permits. Yesterday evening was one of those moments. The air was warm, not hot, the sky was blue and there was nothing urgent to do the next day so the alarm could be set a bit later than on a workday. From our home it is almost an hour drive to the nearest beach and sunset was to be around 21.43 hrs. 

We went to the beach at the Maasvlakte, not exactly a place to go with children that want to play in the sand, but the sunset is as beautiful from that beach as it is from any other place. After parking the car we walked over the line of dunes and started walking, making pictures while we were on the way. When we reached a beautiful spot we waited for the sunset and made more pictures (no surprise here). As the tide was outgoing, there were lots of patches of water left on the shoreline, catching the sunlight and reflecting the colours of the sunset.

Today I picked one of these pictures to make a watercolour painting. As the sun was still visible in this scene I had to use masking fluid to make sure that this spot stayed as white as possible. I also masked the reflections on the water. Because of the use of the masking fluid, I could not speed up the drying process of the painting with my hairdryer so I had to wait for the colours in the sky were dry and hope they would not mix too much while the paint was still wet.

The foreground was also a bit of a challenge, with the reflected light in the water and the dark patches of sand that were left behind by the retreating water. Both water and sand were coloured by the sunset so I had to give them a light glaze without disturbing the first layers of paint too much.

After all had dried I had to remove the masking fluid and correct the white shapes so they would look like the kind of shapes that can be seen in a landscape.  

All that planning and correcting and adding and again correcting made me a bit too focused on the details so I had to walk away for a few minutes before I could see the painting I made as a whole. In fact I am really happy with the result.  Even though the reference picture has been my inspiration and guideline, the painting is not exactly how the scene looked yesterday. 

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

Weeping Willow - 3: Sunset colours

 

The third painting in which the weeping willow is my model is an imaginary landscape in sunset colours.

The sky is a warm yellow, there are some clouds and there is a large pond or a lake with a distant shoreline that is reflected in the water. The wet-in-wet technique is perfect for the first layer and after that a more wet-on-dry technique will have to be used to add depth to the shoreline and its reflections without making a total mess of the first layer op paint.

To this point I had planned my painting and I wanted to let the result of these first layers of paint inspire me what to do next. The weeping willow had to be there somehow but I had not decided yet.

Because I had placed the horizon very low there was not enough foreground in the scene to plant a whole tree and have some space around it so I had to be creative here. I placed the painter/viewer under the tree, looking out over the water into the (far) distance. There are only a few branches in sight, painted with a moist brush on dry paper.

The overhanging branches of the willow tree act as a repoussoir in my painting and that is what I needed for my composition. If I had not added these branches the scene could be anywhere, now there is a sense of size and distance that can be related to the size of the branches and leaves of the tree.

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

Reflections - a different mood

 

In my previous post I have introduced this landscape on the shore of the 'Veerse Meer' with the line of poplar trees reflected in the calm waters of the lake. I also wrote that I would paint this scene again, changing the composition to the one that is in the reference picture. 

This means that I have placed the horizon in the middle of the composition, which is a bit against the rules, and I have changed the colour scheme.

For this painting I have given the poplar trees the green colour they have later in spring. My first painting shows the red-brown shade of the fresh leaves before they turn green a few weeks later. Instead of the grey-blue shade of the clouds and their reflections in the water that I used in my first painting I have used Indigo which is a dark blue shade for this one. 

Both changes create a different mood to the painting and that is what I wanted to achieve.

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

Weeping Willow - 2: Almost sunrise

 

This is the second watercolour with the weeping willow as my model. In my previous post I have written about Tonalism and my plans to make a series of paintings using the weeping willow as my model, placing the tree in various landscapes and weather conditions.

This time I have placed the tree in an imaginary landscape, it has a nice pond to stand next to, there are bushes and trees in the background and I have added the suggestion of buildings, as this tree stands in a city park. 

In fact, in The Netherlands weeping willows are usually planted next to ponds or wide ditches as they thrive in moist or wet soil. That does limit my options for the next paintings a little bit, but it is great for my water-painting skills.  

This time I have painted a 'before sunrise' mood, with clouds in the sky and the red of the rising sun beginning to fade away.  The orange and yellow colours of the rising sun are yet to come, we are still in the blue hour. The colours of the grass are already visible but the trees and bushes have backlight so these are mostly dark shapes against the sky.

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

Weeping Willow - 1

 

The title suggest there are more paintings to come using this tree as my model and that is exactly what I have planned. The reference picture was made a few months ago, in springtime with a lot of sunlight from behind the tree. The colours of the tree are not visible, it's only a silhouette against the light, ideal for creative interpretations.

A few weeks ago I found a group about Tonalism on Facebook and first I started reading about it, then I applied for membership - which was granted.

Tonalism is a style of painting that was used in America, inspired by Impressionism and a bit in the shadow of that movement. It is mostly about atmospheric landscapes, sunrise, sunset, backlit scenes, misty scenes - just what I like very very very much.

So this is a first painting of a series, using the ideas of Tonalism with a weeping willow as my model. The next paintings will have different colours, sunrise or sunset or what I can think of to change the atmosphere of the scene. Of course I can add bushes, other trees or even a pond or hills if I want to. A snowy scene could also be great. 

The original reference picture has some buildings in the background and a street from left to right. The tree stands in a small parc area with a pond on its left. In this painting I have only indicated the buildings and the slope of the grassy area towards the pond. Now I have painted the tree once, I can paint it with more confidence the second time - and all other paintings to come.

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