The hazel trees are in bloom! - a watercolour pencil study

These days are a bit strange, it looks like spring but the temperatures are below 0ºC most of the day. Last weekend the sunshine was inviting us to a little walk so we went outside, warm coats, shawls and stuff and on the way I made some pictures of the hazel trees (Corylus avellana) that are in full bloom right now. The little catkins were standing out against the blue sky and I really wanted to use that image.
As I have written before, for me springtime is about what happens in the trees. The catkins, the flowers, the light greens of the new leaves are all signs of spring.

This is a very 'small' subject, I cannot fill a large sheet of watercolour paper with it. 
I decided to make a drawing using my watercolour pencils and giving accents with water to the branch that has the leading role in my composition. In that branch I have used several colours and the catkins are more detailed. The other branches and catkins are treated with less attention.

For this little drawing I have used the Canson Montval paper, examining how the paper works for pencils and a little bit of water. The structure of the paper did help with this subject.
I have gathered a selection of Derwent Watercolour pencils in the past years and I have used some of them in this study.

This was a nice experiment for me, I am getting more and more comfident to make more detailed drawings compared to the sketches I am using for my watercolour paintings.
More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Getting Green energy

The 'model' for this little painting can be found in the Chinese Garden of "Diergaarde Blijdorp", the Zoo of Rotterdam. My daughter Mariska made some pictures for me a few years ago and these have been waiting for inspiration to come.
This lantern is in the middle of a pond and the holes in it made me think of fishing: the fishing rod fits nicely in there. 
The title refers to the energy source of the lantern. Of course that is electricity but the quest for sustainable energy sources is an important issue nowadays so my imagination came up with something 'green'. Not so very realistic but fun to paint.

This time I have been painting almost dry-on-dry, with just a little water and using small brushes and this is how I should paint on the Canson paper. It was easy now.
Because I have used concentrated Payne's grey for the dark lines I did not need to add ink lines. Another thing to remember for the next time.

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

Confidentials

A new one in my series about lamps.
This is a garden light from my own garden and there are crocuses in my garden now. 
I combined them to make this scene and I enjoyed composing this painting even more than painting it.
I have used the Canson paper again and struggled with it - again. It seems as if the paint does not bind to the paper at all so adding a second or third layer of paint to deepen the colour of an area is not easy, because the first layer is on the move when a moist paintbrush is used. I have been using my hairdryer very much for this painting.
After I had the dark background / night sky as good as how I wanted it to be I did not have the courage to paint the lamp with a brush so I used my Watercolour Markers to draw it in place. The crocus could be painted with a brush because I had kept the area where it was to stand untouched. 

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

At the Reservoir of Bütgenbach - Ardennes

For this painting I have been searching my 'archives' of reference photographs in order to get inspired by one of them.

This scene is at the reservoir of Bütgenbach, in the Ardennes (Belgium) where I was on painting vacation twice. This scene we saw in the first year and although I did not paint it that day I made some quick pictures for later use. I have been making a charcoal drawing of a bridge that day and this was at the other side of that small bridge. 

There was a grey sky that day and only minutes after I took the pictures I used here we had to save our artworks-in-progress from a heavy rainfall. The whole group packed everything in the cars and drove back to the house where we all finished the paintings and drawings we had started 'en plein air'.

The water is a side arm of the reservoir and it is partially covered with plants of all sorts. In the background there are lots of trees and bushes, a field of magenta coloured flowers and the marshy left side of the background is filled with grasses or something that looks very much like grasses.

As this is summertime all the bushes, trees and grasses are in shades of green, only the water plants have a shade that is more distinctly blue-green. So I had a nice challenge here, but if I don't paint scenes like this at all I will never master those green, wet landscapes. I have been struggling to create depth in all that green and in the dark parts of the water, where the trees are reflected.

The water did not move much, so the reflections of the tree lines and the clouds were clearly visible. 

The bushes on the foreground were a tangled mass with some small flowers in between. I did not give them much details as that would attract too much attention.

Working on this watercolour painting was fun, even though I had set myself a challenge.

More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Our Chestnut tree - Spring is coming... soon!

For this watercolour I had to try my skills in prediction. I have used the same reference picture I had made for the charcoal drawing I have published earlier and I have tried to predict how that set of branches will be looking like in springtime.
The reason for this prediction is a contest (of my favourite Watercolour art Magazine) with the theme "Spring".

Of course I could have painted flowers like snowdrops or crocuses or - there is a lot of choice here - but I always like to watch the change in the trees from bare to the moment that the first tender leaves are out and showing themselves. 
From my kitchen window I can see that happening to my chestnut tree and every year I think about making a picture each day to document this phenomenon.
For this 'prediction' I have combined some older pictures and the reference picture I have made several weeks ago.

I have made some study versions drawing the budding leaves, trying out a background and the composition. After making these studies I looked at them all carefully and decided which mistakes I had made in order to create a good submission for the contest.
The entry for the contest is closed now, so I am publishing my painting now, a few weeks after I have made it and submitted it.

I made a watercolour painting with a lot of regard about the composition and I have given it more a subdued atmosphere of expectation. Early spring is more expectation than celebration. The festive atmosphere comes later, when lots of flowers are blooming and all the trees have unfolded their leaves.

This was a nice challenge and I hope the next contest themes will be as inspiring for me as this one. If so, I certainly will participate again.

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

View on Koper (Slovenia)

My son Martijn likes to travel the world. He does not need much of an excuse to pack his bag and leave for a short trip to visit a place he has not seen before. This scene is from a journey he made a few years ago, mosty using trains for transport. He visited several countries in the eastern parts of Europe and made lots of photographs for his own memory and he always kindly allows me to use these landscape photographs as reference for my watercolours and other artwork.

This time I was inspired by a view on Koper in Slovenia. There are not so many buildings visible in this scene but the mountains in the background make this an inspiring view. The church tower is a nice landmark here and I decided that this had to be my 'point of interest' - if possible. I have not been simplifying the view of the roofs and houses much, I guess my son had a high standing point when he made the photographs I used. 
These buildings are built in a way that is not common in The Netherlands, so I had to concentrate well while painting them. Shadows, angles, roofs or streets are not what I am used to see in daily life so I cannot rely on my memory and have to work with my sketch - with lots of notes written on it - close by.

I have been painting this in two steps, the first step was wet-in-wet for the sky, the mountains and the 'details' in the background area, and the second step was wet-on-dry for the buildings, the trees between the buildings and the details. 
Usually I paint the whole painting wet-in-wet first with details wet-on-dry and that works very well for most landscapes. This little town asked for another approach and I am pleased with the result.

More information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com 

Mushrooms again - trying out a new watercolour paper.

The last few days I have been free from my job, so after all the household chores were finished I wanted to paint. For these occasions I have an album with lots of mushroom pictures made by my husband or my daughter during autumnal walks. I just have to select one, think about how I want to paint this and get started.
Last year I bought a small block with Canson Montval paper, because of the convenient small size, ideal to bring with me on vacations. I did not need it last vacation so I decided to try the paper now. This time I used a reference made by my husband Peter.

The first - dark - painting is made in my usual manner: soaking and stretching my paper and then painting with a lot of water. The paper did not take that very well so I put a note on the block reminding me not to soak the paper before using it. After soaking it looked like the paper was pilling and I am not used to that.
I have tried to paint the background first and that too was a challenge, but after several stages of adding colour, washing with water, spreading out the colour and repeating where possible the background may be overworked, but it could be worse. Then I added the colours of the mushrooms and used a wooden pricker to draw the lines on the hoods of the mushrooms. 

The second painting was made on dry paper that had not been soaked and stretched. I started with the mushrooms and added the background colours later. having learned from the first painting, I did not try to make a dark, dramatic background but just added some colour variations by changing the mixture of blue, yellow and some Burnt Sienna that gives the green of the mosses under the mushrooms. And even here I had to be careful not to use too much water. For extra texture I splattered over the green mosses with the mixture I used for the mushrooms.
To make the mushrooms stand out I used Calligraphy Ink for some of the outlines and the lines on the hoods.

I have learned a lot about this watercolour paper - at least what I can not do with it and I will use it again of course, probably with the wash-and-ink technique or watercolour pencils.

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