'Sallandse Heuvelrug' - at the woodlands

Our walks in the Natural Reserve 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' were made through a varied landscape. The marked trails we followed always start at a parking place, most of the times with an information center or information point nearby. We always started out in an area of woodland and at some point we came to the moors and the trail always ended at the starting point, so we re-entered the woods near the end of the trail. We like this variation very much. 
There are not many areas of heath in The Netherlands so we like to visit them.

To understand the structure of the landscape I added a passage I copied from the Wikipedia page about the Sallandse Heuvelrug:

"From the Middle Ages onwards the area was used for grazing by sheep and goat, and the upper layer of the soil was removed to use it as fertilizer for the crop fields. In this period, the area became a heathland because of sand-drifting. In the beginning of the 20th century the state started forestry programs, to prevent this erosion and to produce pine wood. The area is well known for its scenery because of its relatively large heathlands."

The second day of our four days vacation was a very foggy day. The mist did not leave the entire day although at some point the sun was more or less visible through the mist.
The reference picture for this painting was made (by me) at one of those brighter moments. We were about to enter one of the areas of woodland and the heath was a bit further away. On the field behind the path are bushes of cowberries and the foreground is mostly moss and lichen. The birch tree is standing all alone, maybe there have been more in a recent past, although that does nor seem very likely as there were no tree stumps in sight.

This scene is much greener than the ones I painted earlier. The moss, lichen and the cowberry bushes are evergreens, the grass in between and the heath in the distance are brown.
The trees of the woodland are faded away by the fog, as are the bushes in the distance.

For this painting I challenged myself to mix my greens from blue and yellow colours. 
I should have done this years ago, this works much better than mixing the ready made green with brown, blue, yellow or red in order to make them more like the colours of nature.

More information (size, paper and paint used, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

"Sallandse Heuvelrug' - Twilight

As I told before, we went to our Natural Reserve 'Sallandse Heuvelrug' for a short vacation in the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve. In the four days we were there, we went hiking for three days. Each day had its own kind of weather and the differences were inspiring us to make lots of photographs. 
The first day we were walking in the late afternoon, just before sunset. We had driven to our destination first and thus it was not really early as we started walking. 
We had chosen a marked trail of about 6 km and because we were making so many photographs, we were not making much progress. 
One of the rules about walking in the Natural Reserves in The Netherlands is that you are free to walk on the paths of a Natural Reserve, but you have to leave before sunset. Because it was winter, we made it just in time.
The sky was clear that afternoon and the colours of the sunset were wonderful. I could not help making some reference pictures for the purpose of painting later - back at home.

As this was a twilight scene, I used my Twilight Colours to paint it. I chose to do this painting on a quarter sheet (a full sheet is 51 x 76 cm, usually I use a half sheet, 38 x 51 cm). The thoughts behind that choice are not easy to explain, usually this is a decision based upon the 'feeling' of my subject and most of the times I make a decision that gives me a nice painting as a result.

More information about this watercolour painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com