The first time I saw the church towers of Bütgenbach I already knew I wanted to paint them as they were at that moment: far away in the evening mist.
I made some reference pictures to remember the atmosphere of that evening and I made a sketch of the scene in the brighter light of the following morning.
The colours were still very much related to the blues and greens of summer but after a week of shades of blue and green I needed a change. So I decided on a limited palette of french ultramarine, burnt sienna and violet to give the scene a different mood.
Because of the evening mist, there are not so many details visible on the towers and surrounding buildings, but this was the view that did draw my attention.
Adding the 'highlights' to make the foreground stand out a bit more was a bit of an experiment as I did not know whether it would work in this colour scheme, but it turned out really nice!
More information about this watercolour painting can be found at my website: www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
This scene was too much fun to make only a charcoal drawing, so I wanted to make a watercolour as well. As the foggy atmosphere gave the reference picture a monochromatic look already I decided to make a watercolour with Indigo as its only colour.
Of course there are differences between the drawing I made and this watercolour, I do not use a projector to transfer my sketches to the paper.
The difference in techniques and my experiences in them also make a difference, of course.
While painting I decided to change the way the bridge stands out from the background.
More information about this watercolour (size, paper and paint used, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
As I mentioned before, my children like to travel and they bring home lots of pictures and stories. Both the pictures and the stories are inspiring me to paint although sometimes the pictures have to wait a while before I am ready to use them.
This is a scene in Slovenia, the small town of Ptuj as can be seen across the river Drava. The reference picture was made by my son Martijn.
The reflections of the buildings and the trees in the water attracted my attention here and I have been wanting to paint it several times, but I kept hesitating about what paper size to use and how to crop the reference picture - or not at all.
Today I just started sketching and ended up approximately halfway the reference picture.
This way I could give more attention to the reflections and that is what I wanted to do here.
More information about this watercolour (size, colours used, etc) can be found on my website www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
