Lost lights

The colours of the sky are always worth looking at, even in an industrial area such as Rijnmond. So I decided to 'recyle' the sketch I made for my first 'urbex' watercolour, the one for which the heavy industry of that area was my inspiration.
This time I chose to stay a bit closer to reality: the lights are still on!
It's really amazing how many lights there are on those towers and buildings, almost as if there is someone present on each and every metre of those long corridors.
I chose to work with the same three colours I used in the latest painting I made and create an atmosphere of expectation. People can still come to work here, as a contrary to the scene I painted before.

More information about this and my other watercolours can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr 

Looking for a blue sky

For this watercolour I got inspired by a photo my daughter Mariska made. There was something interesting about the abandoned building and the holes through which the blue sky was visible. But before this painting was finished, I had to do a lot of thinking and I had to make some changes.
First of all I had not seen the place. The photo was showing a little piece of building with parts of walls almost everywhere. As it was really sunlit, there was no shadow or perspective to reveal te actual structure. So I 'took down' another wall and simplified the part of the building I was going to paint.
Second was the decay. I like to exaggerate that a little, letting plants grow over walls and through windows. And yet I had painted so many green vines over the last weeks that I wanted a change. Autumn maybe? With yellow, red and orange for my foliage. 
So that was the plan!
I started painting the sky and the walls and planned to fill in the plants after that. When the walls were dry, I started to paint the vines on the left and at that moment I decided it was already winter in my painting. So there are some leaves left on the vines and on the branches of the tree we see through the door opening, but they are painted with the same colours  the vines and branches have.

More information about this watercolour (size, colours used, etc.) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr

Abandoned Sanatory - by day

 

An abandoned sanatory is an intriguing subject to paint, so I decided to make two different scenes with one reference photo my daughter Mariska made.
She made the photo at night looking out from the windows of the abandoned Sanatório de Valongo in Portugal.
This is the daylight scene as I imagined it to be several years from now.
The original photo had a lot of backlight so I had to guess where the wall stopped and the floor began, with a little help from perspective lines that was easy to do.
Then the walls themselves, were they high or not? I decided on high and damaged so I added cracks and green algae.
The floor would also be dark with algae and moist from the incoming rain.
The plants outside would have taken the opportunity to overgrow the walls and windows, so there will be vines coming in. But not too far, once inside they are devoid of sunlight and can't grow any further.
I had a lot of fun imagining all this and of course painting it!

More information about this watercolour - and the nighttime version - can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr

Still standing - abandoned houses

This house really is abandoned and my daughter Mariska could not resist the impulse to make some pictures. With several buildings (house, shed, stable) in different stages of decay it was really hard to find out which was which so I decided to select some of it to make up my own composition.
The chimney was to be my subject, it really did catch my attention so I had to compose my painting around it.
The contrast between the chimney and the trees is stronger now and the decay of the buildings is exaggerated as well. The tree that comes out of the middle of the house is real, the other plants growing all over are my additions. But it will not take long before those are real too!

More information about this watercolour can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr

Abandoned courtyard

The inspiration for this landscape came from a sunset photo my daughter Mariska made for me. The sunset is nice, with lots of clouds and colours in the sky, but the courtyard is a little worn out so my imagination had to add in some interesting details before painting this scene. 
Again, I started to wonder what this would look like after people had abandoned the site.
I exaggerated the worn out look of the courtyard to a point where normal use is not possible anymore. I added a lot of green, overgrowing the buildings and helping their decay. The sunset had to remain of course, that's what started my creative process!

More information about this watercolour (colours used, size and more) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr

Rijnmond - Imagining the future

Rijnmond – Imagining the future

Last month I worked on the Maasvlakte, so I had to drive west along the industries of Botlek and Europoort every morning.  What I particularly noticed was the green look of it after coming in the Europoort section. Trees, grass, bushes everywhere – and industry of course. Somehow I see the nature parts first.

Taking that road every day, I started imagining: it’s already green, what will happen when there is no more oil to process and these industries will be abandoned?

Of course it helps that many chimneys already have a rusted look, and much of the other industry as well. So a bit more rust, a bit more decay and lots of extra green.

I wanted to paint that!

Things like this have been done before, but never my way.

That meant looking well at the oil plants – and still driving safely - remembering how it looks now and picking out the structures that I think interesting.

All that was combined to create an imaginary oil plant somewhere in the area. For my composition I did some thinking. I could have chosen between horizontal and vertical but that seemed a bit too obvious to me. There had to be a curve somewhere and that can be done with a thing called ‘cantilever composition’

The vertical elements are still there and the element of desertion too; that was to be my painting.

The buildings are decayed and rusty of course, so I needed to work with more details than I usually do. I still wanted to add some ‘haziness’ which is almost always present in the Rijnmond area, due to the influence of sea, sand and blowing wind.

I am really satisfied with the result of my imagination combined with my painting efforts. Maybe I will do some more paintings on this theme.

More information about this watercolour (size, colours and paper used) can be found on www.jannekesatelier.co.nr