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
Autumn colours do not come at all trees and bushes at the same time.
So here all was still in shades of green exept that one little bush which had coloured to a fiery red and really stood out.
I decided it deserved to be painted, so my daughter Mariska made some reference pictures for me. The green foliage was still there, but it already had a lot of thin spots.
So I decided to make a charcoal drawing, that material makes it easier to show that air through the branches. And a Cadmium Red pastel pencil for the brave little bush.
More information about this drawing (size etc.) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
This is not just any parking lot - it's the parking lot at our hotel on the Veluwe, last October. By day it was just a parking lot with trees and bushes surrounding it, but at night in the light of the lanterns those birch trees really did catch our attention.
So the first evening I was standing next to my daughter holding equipment while she was making lots of beautiful pictures. One of those pictures had not only the trees but also a bush in autumn colours and I decided to paint that one.
This is a scene that asks for white gouache on a black background. For the colours I just mixed in some watercolour paint, that works very well for me.
More information about this painting (size, colour and paints used etc.) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
The special edition colours by Winsor&Newton Professional were too tempting.
I already had the Smalt (Dumont's Blue) and I never use black colours, so I bought Sanguine Red, Quinacridone Violet, Aqua Green and Cobalt Green Deep.
It was a challenge to find something to paint for an average reference photo does not have (all) those nice colours. Last winter we were in the train that rides alongside the river Douro at the time of sunset and my daughter Mariska made a lot of pictures.
I decided to use one of them, a picture I had not painted before.
The sunset was really nice and reflected in the river beautifully, I just had to change the colours a bit. The mountains were all black because of the strong backlight, but I do remember seeing detail in them so I painted them that way.
Getting used to a new set of colours is not done with just one painting so I expect to have a lot of fun with this in the near future!
More information about this watercolour and the others I made after our winter trip to Portugal last year can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
Our beautiful National Reserve 'De Veluwe' has been the inspiration of my latest paintings. It is not over yet!
As I mentioned before we were in the vicinity of a moraine, a leftover from the last Ice Age. A lot of the low hills in the area are part of that moraine, but this scene is a bit different.
The area of the Renderklippen also contains some prehistorical burial mounds.
They are 4000 to 5000 years old and still visible in the landscape, situated beautifully on the edge of a small moor. The foggy weather made the site even more mysterious.
The reference photo was made for me by my husband Peter.
More information about this watercolour (size, colours and paper used) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
A simple scene of the terrace of our hotel is ideal for experiments!
The combination of the small bush with autumn colours and the dark flower pot drew my attention and I wanted to paint this somehow.
I decided to work it as a charcoal drawing and to experiment with it.
First I decided on my composition - simply the two elements I wanted to paint with a suggestion of a background.
Then I decided on my experiments - one with a Conté pencil in Sanguine and one watercolour underpainting in the red colours of autumn.
Working with Conté added to my charcoal was nice and not much different. I found out I can decide to add that whenever I like in the drawing process.
The watercolour underpainting needs some planning ahead and it affects the paper in a way I cannot smudge my charcoal the way I like to do.
So for my charcoal drawings I will stick to drawing - with charcoal and sometimes I will add Conté for some colour.
More information can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
The first time we saw this landscape it was foggy weather. So when the fog lifted after a few days we could see much more of the autumn colours this part of the Veluwe has to offer. And we all had a very pleasant surprise!
The sky was still cloudy, but opening up with bright red/orange and patches of blue.
The trees were changing from green to a reddish brown and the heather lost their flowers but still had a lot of violet to be seen.
As I explained earlier, we were in a moraine so the landscape is not as flat as the rest of The Netherlands. We were walking on the top of the hills and looking at the scene below us when my daughter Mariska made the reference photo I used for this painting.
More information about this painting (size, colours used) can be found at www.jannekesatelier.co.nr
