The leaves of our chestnut tree are changing to their autumn colours now.
During the long hot and dry summer there were already some leaves with brown spots, but now they are changing fast. Soon they will be completely brown and fall off.
I made a reference picture on a calm day, not so much wind that the branches and leaves were moving too much for a good picture.
The leaves with all the autumn colours were what I wanted to draw and here is the result.
There is still some green left, yellow, brown and dark brown are also in the same leaves.
I enjoyed drawing this scene, layering and mixing the colours of my pencils until I had the results I wanted.
More information about this drawing (materials and colours used, size, contact information, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
The nature in our country is beautiful, but sometimes very wet. To be able to walk in these areas plank paths are constructed and maintained as part of the signposted walks.
Our last walk in 'Landgoed Visdonk' passed by one of those paths. The forest pond it crosses is a large one and the views are beautiful once on the path. This pond is an open area between two parts of the forest.
The plank path is very close to the surface and constructed in a slightly curvy way.
I have made some reference pictures at the beginning of the path for later use.
It took some time before I knew what I wanted to paint, the day was bright and sunny and the pictures I made are very detailed. Because detailed painting is not the style I like the most I had to think of something else.
For this watercolour painting I have changed the atmosphere of the scene from a bright sunny day into something more moody.
The foggy atmosphere is not so very strange in such a place, these forest ponds are well known for their morning fog after cold nights.
After all this thinking I sketched the path and the lines of the forest in the background and started painting. I have used a limited palette of only four colours and only the beginning of the path has the suggestion of details.
More information about this watercolour painting (paper and colour used, size, availability, contact information) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Twelve years ago, on a short summer vacation in Scotland we visited a lot of beautiful scenery, great views and some tourist attractions.
Driving the Trossachs Trail we stopped at The Duke's Pass to see the views - and to make photographs of course. The whole family was there, each with a camera so there were lots of photographs for the album I usually make after such vacations.
From that album I selected a few photographs of the same mountains and valleys - each a bit different from the other.
The dark clouds above the mountains were great for a painting so I have tried to make them as moody as possible.
The mountains in the Scottish Highlands are not completely covered with forest and woodland, as are the high hills of The Ardennes or the mountains of the Sauerland, which are situated more southern than Scotland. In the Trossachs the mountains are not completely bare, there are grasslands and fields with mosses that give the area a nice green appearance in summer. Unfortunately I do not know anything about the other seasons.
For all that green I have mixed, layered, placed shadows until I was convinced I had achieved the same moody atmosphere as I had given to the clouds.
More information about this watercolour painting (colours and paper used, size, contact information, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Twelve years ago we were in Scotland for a week of vacation. At that time 'we' meant my husband, son, daughter and me and we all had a camera, so that vacation was well documented with photographs. Two of the cameras were still analog, using films.
We did not go far into the Highlands, but we did see a lot of the area called The Trossachs, as we went for rides and signposted walks not far from our vacation home.
One day I was going through the album of that summer vacation and I was inspired by the pictures of the mountains and clouds we took that week.
There are lots of mountains in The Trossachs and at one view point we could make pictures all around us, so I just had to pick the most inspiring point of view.
Working with an album full of photographs that cannot be replaced beside me is not very relaxing, so I decided to do a charcoal drawing. Charcoal is a dry material and it can be brushed off when an 'accident' should happen.
With those precautions taken, nothing happened of course.
Looking at several pictures I came to this composition. One of the pictures showed more details of the mountains, another picture showed the clouds, a third picture showed the scene from another angle and more.
What attracted me here was the dark sky full of clouds and wide view of the mountains and the valleys between them.
More information about this charcoal drawing can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Almost two years ago my husband and me had a short vacation in The Black Forest in Germany and we visited the ruins of Allerheiligen. We made some pictures and I made watercolour paintings. The first watercolour I made had the colours as they were, and the yellow tree did look great in reality, in the reference picture and not so great in the watercolour painting. The painting was laid aside and I tried again with another palette. That second painting pleased me more.
Last summer, during my painting vacation I was introduced to 'painting over' and made some nice personal versions of pages from an atlas.
We also did 'metamorphosis' paintings, with a simple painting to start from and adding new elements each next version.
For this painting I have combined these two ideas. I took the watercolour painting and started drawing using my Conté Sketching Crayons, adding some dark areas to the ruins and changing the shape and quantity of the surrounding bushes and trees.
In this way I have made the yellow tree a part of the background instead of something that did not belong in that place.
The added plants and bushes make this place look more abandoned.
This version pleases me much more than the original painting (which does not exist any more) and now I have come closer to the atmosphere I wanted for this scene.
More information about this painting can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
It's about time for an update on the chestnut tree in my front garden.
The chestnuts are falling off early this year, probably due to the hot and dry summer we had here. They fall inside their shells this time, sometimes in small groups with a part of the branch they were growing on.
Most of these will end in school, as my husband is a (primary) school teacher.
I have 'saved' some of them and used a chestnut in its shell and a bit of a branch for a drawing.
For this drawing I have not made a sketch, the model was on my drawing table and I have used it directly.
I have chosen some colours from my Graphitint Pencils and my Watercolour Pencils and combined them, mixing colours like I do when I am painting, until I had the results I was looking for.
More information about this drawing (size, paper and colours used, contact information, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
Sometimes I use a sketch more than once. This poplar tree has already been the subject of a charcoal drawing, but at that time I did show much more details of the background and the surrounding landscape.
During my painting vacation our teacher also talked about our previous works and gave some tips we could follow to improve our future works.
So I made a watercolour painting using the sketch of this tree and followed some of the advice I was given.
The background is not detailed, only suggested by wet-in-wet painting. This technique also gives more muted colours, especially when the greens and browns are mixtures of more than one colour of paint. The dried paint gives an illusion of a foggy day.
The foreground is now only a suggestion of grasses and herbs.
The surrounding landscape is still here, but does not distract the viewer's attention from the subject of the painting.
Once again I concentrated on the atmosphere of the painting.
This was to be a 'portrait' of the poplar tree, so this tree is a presence in the painting.
More information about this watercolour painting (materials used, size, availability, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
