A few weeks ago I was contacted by a nice lady who was interested to buy one of my watercolours made after I visited Kinderdijk (Netherlands).
This was an end of winter scene.
The lady wanted to frame the painting according to the interior of her home, so I delivered only the painting. On other occasions I delivered a framed painting.
After the framing was done I was invited to come and see how my watercolour painting was doing in its new home.
I was allowed to make some pictures and this is the best of those.
More information about the other Kinderdijk watercolour (and the other paintings) I made can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
The end of the long, hot summer is here and most of the days the weather is inviting for a walk. Very close to my home is the 'Alblasserbos' so we don't have to take the car to get to the beginning of our walk. The forest area itself has lots of oak trees, willows, beech trees and poplars, but the outer edges have bushes of all sorts.
Amongst these bushes are some Viburnums and they are showing their berries now. The leaves are changing colour and are full of small holes, that may be due to the extremely dry summer we had this year.
I made some reference pictures with the idea to paint the berries and some of the leaves.
Of course I could have used a white background, but that was not what I wanted. The rest of the bush - and the other bushes standing next to this one - are suggested by the variety in green colours and some lines that suggest more leaves.
The background is done wet - in - wet and the suggested leaves are placed on a dry surface and faded with a little water.
I had applied masking fluid for the branches and it was not easy to fade the hard edges after removing the masking fluid. Maybe next time I will try to shape the branches by taking out the paint with a moist brush, so I can compare the results of both techniques.
The leaves and berries were left white and filled in later. Finding the right shade of green was the next 'problem' and I have added a bit more yellow and a brown to suggest the autumn colours that were visible in most parts of the bush.
The berries had different colours, some very red, some a bit more orange. Finding the right colour mixes was not difficult. I added some suggestions of berries to the background.
The leaves were still not what I wanted, so I took one of my Line Markers and drew the leaf veins with it. The result was what I had hoped for and I decided to stop at this point.
The picture may not show the painting as it is, please tilt the screen a bit to see all the shades of green I have painted.
More information about this painting (materials used, size, availability, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Most of the zoological gardens in The Netherlands are very nice places, not only because of the animals but also because of the park area. The 'Dierenpark Amersfoort' is one of those zoos with nice large trees, a lot of plants and a great scenery.
This Zoo has a small Japanese Garden, with some rocks, places for meditation and a pond with Koi carp and a waterfall.
The day we visited 'Dierenpark Amersfoort' was a very hot, sunny day so I found myself a spot in the shadows and sketched the waterfall while the others were exploring other parts of the Zoo. After I had finished my sketch I also made a reference picture to remember the colours.
This watercolour painting is based on the sketch, with a very little bit of help from the picture.
The paper I have used here is new for me, this is a quarter of a sheet Arches grain fin. I have soaked and stretched it and started drawing the most important lines as soon as the paper was dry. After that.... painting!
Rocks like these are something I do not often see in our landscape so they still are a challenge for me. The trees behind the rocks and the water of the pond were easier.
This place, hidden in the small Japanese Garden was filled with shadows from the trees behind and above the rocks and the rocks themselves that blocked most of the light.
So the white, falling water and the green plants that grow between the rocks do stand out against the dark, wet rocks.
The water of the pond looked dark because of the shadows of the rocks.
There were lots of other visitors and the little bamboo fence I had chosen to sit on was not very comfortable so after I had finished my sketch I joined the others for our lunch.
If I had been alone in that place it would have been very relaxing and I have tried to show that quality in my painting.
More information about this watercolour painting (size, materials used, availability, contact information, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
This time I have a blog post about something new (for me); greeting cards!
In the past I have been ordering very limited amounts of greeting cards for personal use, but suddenly inspiration came: I will sell them!
I have used some of my recent watercolours for these greeting cards.
They are double cards with a blank inside so they can be used for almost all purposes.
Just write your message 'Happy Birthday' or 'Get well soon' or 'Congratulations with your anniversary' or what might be the occasion.
The greeting card come with a white envelope.
The price is very friendly; € 2.00 for one card and € 17.50 for a packet of ten cards.
I will have to ask a contribution in the shipping costs as these prices are really low.
These prices are valid in 2018, they may change in the future.
You can indicate that you are interested by using the contact form of my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com or the contact form of this blog.
Bij wijze van uitzondering schrijf ik ook een stukje Nederlands in deze blog post.
Ik heb namelijk iets nieuws (voor mij); wenskaarten!
In het verleden heb ik wel wenskaarten besteld in kleine oplagen en voor eigen gebruik, maar ineens kwam de inspiratie om ze te gaan verkopen!
Ik heb een aantal van mijn recente aquarellen gebruikt voor deze wenskaarten.
Het zijn dubbele kaarten met een blanco binnenkant, dus ze kunnen voor bijna elk doel gebruikt worden. Schrijf er zelf de wens 'Hartelijk Gefeliciteerd' of 'Beterschap' of 'Gefeliciteerd met jullie ... jarig Huwelijk' of wat er maar van toepassing is.
Er zit een witte enveloppe bij de kaart.
De prijs is erg vriendelijk; € 2.00 per kaart en € 17.50 voor een set van tien kaarten.
Ik moet dan wel een bijdrage vragen in de verzendkosten, deze prijzen zijn erg laag.
Deze prijzen gelden voor 2018 en kunnen in de toekomst veranderen.
Iedereen kan zijn interesse voor deze kaarten laten weten via het contactformulier van mijn website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com of via het contactformulier van deze blog.
The list of suggestions for September 2018 gives 'Read a Book Day' for this day. As you no doubt have already noticed, I do not paint or sketch using every prompt in the list supplied by Doodlewash. I need to be inspired to paint (or draw) before I even start thinking about what I will make for the occasion.
Reading books is one of my passions (besides watercolour painting and cooking) so I wanted to do something with this day.
Open books with things (gentle or not) coming out of them are a very common theme so I had to do something else. When reading a book I sometimes 'disappear' in the story I am reading so that was to be the theme. And now something that fits my skills....
The idea of diving came up, the diving that is done in a swimming pool and there is no water splashing in all directions but words, or fragments of words.
As I have not been in public swimming pools for years, I had to imagine a structure for the tower that holds the diving board. Photo references on the Internet show many possibilities, so I invented my own. This one is for diving into a good book so there should be no limits.
This time I have used my Watercolour Markers - and a brush with some water - for most of the image and I have added Line markers where I thought they would be needed.
I am still exploring the possibilities and limitations of these markers and I am not disappointed with the result of this experiment.
The letters are parts of the words 'read a book' in English, Dutch and French.
More information about this line and wash drawing can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
According to the list of subjects suggested for this month (September 2018) by Doodlewash today is Skyscraper Day.
In The Netherlands we do not have real skyscrapers, due to the condition of our soil. For inspiration I had to go to the Internet, to find me some reference pictures of skyscrapers. Of course I have used a vanishing point and a lot of lines (and my eraser), for the perspective has to be right in a composition like this.
I had already decided that I would make a painting 'looking up'. The reason for this choice lies in the Dutch name for these buildings; 'wolkenkrabbers' which translates to 'cloud scrapers'. I wanted the buildings to disappear in the clouds and a 'looking up' view would make painting that just a bit more challenging.
As it all had to be imaginary I have not copied the glass buildings that can be found on the Internet, but decided to use the colours of bricks for my buildings. This way they look more like the buildings that can be found in The Netherlands.
For this painting I have used the cellulose paper I had bought recently and this time the 'fight' was just a little bit harder. This could be caused by the fact I had to do buildings with straight lines this time, combined with the vague shapes in the clouds.
My hairdryer has done a good job here, more than once.
Once again I have used the suggestion by Doodlewash to try something I do not usually do. This time I have painted imaginary buildings in an unusual perspective.
More information about this watercolour painting (size, materials used, availability, etc.) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
In some of my earlier blog posts I may have mentioned that I am member of Doodlewash.com, and that sometimes I use the prompts they supply to get inspiration for a painting.
For the month of September (2018) the prompts are based on really existing remembrance or appreciation days. Today it is Ginger Cat appreciation Day so I just had to try to paint one or more Ginger cats!
I used the references from 'Plaisirs de Peindre' Magazine that I have used before to make drawings. The drawings were not so hard to do, watercolour is quite a challenge when it is about the cats. The tree trunk they are climbing on was easy.
I have tried to use different colour mixtures, based on Burnt Sienna to make two different cats. Ginger cats come in all sorts of colour mixtures, some of them have a lot of white in their fur, others are in shades of an orange-brown with more or less stripes.
The cat on the left only got some sense of roundness after I had used pencils, as all the paint I applied continued to flow out to become a very flat looking surface.
I do not know what caused that problem, maybe the colours I used to mix the shades of 'Ginger' for the fur.
With this painting I have tried to paint animals - a subject I usually avoid. That said, the results are not very bad and I might want to do this more often to become more experienced and (I hope) better.
This painting was done mostly for the fun of planning and painting a watercolour of two Ginger Cats.
There are more remembrance days in Doodlewash's list for this month so there will be some more paintings that I would not usually do.
And the title of the painting? That comes from the Dr.Who fans.
