Hydrangea - shades of red

These Hydrangea flowers are also in the garden of Milonga, where I was last week for a painting vacation. These flowers intrigue me very much, mostly because the large four leaf shapes on the outside are not flowers at all. They are there to seduce the insects to come to the plant and the five pointed shapes in the middle are the real flowers, waiting to be fertilised by those insects. 

I have sketched some of the 'fake flowers' ans some of the shapes in the heart of the structure, the flower buds and some of the star shaped 'real flowers' to make a nice composition for a red painting.
This time I made the background in shades of red and I had to use three layers of watercolour paint before it was to my liking. In the middle was to be a source of light, this is different from the paintings I made earlier this week, where the light came from one of the corners.

Our teacher Ad van Aart helped me find the right composition for this background and advised during the making of the painting. I had to add some more flower shapes on the edges of my painting and added a light wash of yellow to make the light source warm.

Even if this is only one week, I am learning fast and I really am happy with the result of this experiment. I never thought I would be painting flowers every day and enjoying it but this is what happened to me during this painting vacation. 
There is one more painting to come that I made in Milonga, but at home I will have to explore this theme a bit more, there are a lot of nice colour combinations and compositions that have not been tried yet.

More information about this watercolour painting (size, colours and paper used, availability, contact information, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Hedge bindweed, painted in shades of yellow

After I had painted in red and orange, I wanted to paint in shades of yellow. The hedge bindweed (Calystegia sepium) flowers grow in the garden of Milonga, so it was easy to sketch a few and make a composition using the shapes of the flowers, leaves and buds.
Our teacher Ad van Aart suggested that I should try to make my background first and add the flower composition later. For the background I painted three layers of shades of yellow, taking care to leave one corner almost white and to make another corner as dark as possible with yellow as my chosen colour.

From the prepared composition the best cut out (for the background that was created) was selected - with a little help from our teacher - and drawed on the dry watercolour paper using a watercolour pencil.
Using watercolour paint in an ochre colour I accentuated the leaves and the buds, the flowers were given an extra 'shadow' with my darkest shade of yellow. Finally the flowers were given their true shape by adding fine lines of a dark earthly red colour.

This technique - painting my background first and then adding some flower shapes - is different from the Umbels paintings I made before and I like the result even more. 
In fact I have made some more paintings 'like this' during my stay in Milonga and I have plans to make more of them now that I am back home.

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

Umbels, painted in shades of red and orange

During my painting vacation in Milonga I wanted to paint flowers and I wanted to use the colours red, orange and yellow. 
The first morning our teacher Ad van Aart asked all of us what we wanted to do during that week and I indicated my wishes. So most of the time I have been sketching, drawing and painting flowers.
My first paintings are based on a 'blind contour' sketch of some umbels that were in the garden of Milonga. I have made a background using shades of red, added the flowers and strengthened the background with the shades I had already used and added a Gray for the shadows and stems of the flowers. This red painting followed the composition of the initial sketch.

After this first painting I was eager to do a second one with shades of orange. This painting is on a much larger sheet of paper and I deliberately changed the composition (advised by Ad, our teacher) so there is much more open space above the flowers. The shadows are made with sepia which is much more harmonious with the orange shades of the background.

Using a much larger sheet of paper was a bit more challenging, but I still had lots of fun painting this one.

Both paintings are what I thought they would be and I am happy that I did choose to paint this subject, using a very limited palette. I have explored the shades of red and orange and I have experimented with the composition these flowers offered me.

Of course this was not the end of my week in Milonga, so there is more to follow!

More information about these watercolour paintings (size, colours used, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Landscape with elements of surprise

Last week in Milonga I painted the landscape only once, in a workshop about surprises in our paintings.
Our teacher Ad van Aart had prepared this lesson and I was eager to join (these lessons are voluntary, we are not required to attend).

The aim was to paint a scene and to add an element of surprise to the painting. 
My plan was to paint a landscape (this is the view from my bedroom that week) and add checkerboard - like marks on top of it for my first 'surprise' and do something with a flower shape for the second 'surprise'. It was easy to paint the landscape so I have made three versions that are almost identical and gave two of them a 'paint over'.

This was fun and I liked doing this. 
The flower shape was the hardest, mostly because I had tried to hide the underlying landscape completely and that could not be done with watercolour paint. 
So I washed away some of the paint but the result is not really beautiful. 
That is a lesson learned.

More information about these watercolour paintings can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Leaves

Last week I was in Milonga again, a week full with painting, drawing and learning organised by Ad van Aart.
I have learned a lot this week and now I am trying to write coherent blog posts about the paintings and drawings I came home with.

This charcoal drawing is the result of an instruction about composition. We were to fill the sheet with our subject, make a cut out and find a good composition.

I had sketched some leaves and decided on this the best cut out. 
Charcoal is my preferred medium for this drawing and I really am happy with the result.

A few days later, the last day of the week I had some spare time and I decided to try a mixed media experiment.
I made a watercolour background in shades of blue and wanted to make a drawing on top of that. The sketch with the leaves deserved some more attention and this time I made a drawing with all three leaves in it, using watercolour pencils in some shades of green.
The structure of the watercolour paper is still visible and I really like that.

More information about these two drawings can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Mushroom - if I only knew which one this is....

We are having a nice summer here, not as hot as last year and some days, even weeks with rain to keep our nature hydrated.
Last weekend we went for some signposted walks near the Visitors Centre in Oisterwijk (Netherlands) and made some nice pictures while we were walking. Those will be used as reference pictures later.

Near the entrance of the Visitors Centre were some logs of dead wood, nor even the bark was left on it, so I have no idea what trees these used to be. Growing from one of these logs there was  a nice group of mushrooms, white, light yellow and a bit of orange. (I have not been able to find the name of the mushrooms) I did make some reference pictures and decided to paint these in my 'white on black' technique, with the use of some watercolour pencils for the details that don't want to be painted.

Of course that needs to be explained: the black paper I am using is not watercolour paper, it absorbs a lot of water and paint before the white stands out. This really takes five or more layers. The log of dead wood that provides the food for the mushroom is very dark and does not need so many layers of paint, but the few details of the log I did want to show would 'sink into the paper' if I used my paint for them. So here is where my pencils come into the process and the details are there where I want them to be.

I really like the results I get with this technique. At first, I only mixed gouache and watercolour, but the pencils really add that something I missed in some of my first 'white on black' paintings.

More information about this painting (materials and colours used, size, contact information, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Medieval sheds - another summer storm scene

In my previous post I have painted a reconstruction of a Medieval barn that has been found somewhere in our country. More buildings have been rebuilt and are to be visited for the public and I have been sketching these sheds too. These are dated a few centuries earlier than the barn I have already painted,they are from the Early Middle Ages and the remains of these buildings have also been found in our country.

Again I have painted a cloudy sky, like an approaching storm and I have added some trees to the scene. The reconstruction sites also have trees, but these are not always near the buildings I have sketched. These reconstructed buildings have to be visited by a lot more people than originally lived there in the Middle Ages. 

So for my paintings I 'replace' the trees a bit.

The shed in the back is completely constructed from wood, which has obtained a nice grayish shade over time. The shed in front has a thatched roofing with a lot of mosses growing on top of that. 

The entrances of the sheds were not to be seen from the spot where I found a place to sit and sketch, but that did not really matter to me. I did like the view from that point so I sketched what I could see and painted this scene with the sketch as my reference.

I wanted to give this scene a rural (Medieval) atmosphere and I really like the result.

More information about this painting (materials,size,availability, etc) can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com