Category Archives: Watercolors

Postcards from Benisanó

Vivenkapelle, Watercolor

New field easel with painting tray, water cups, hanging brush holders and painting rag. Very uncomfortable folding chair. Customised pochade box (for preserving the upcoming oils when wet) on the ground. Day pack to the left. Electric bike not pictured. 😉

The weather in August finally turned nice, (July BTW was a disaster), so I headed out to the fields. I had purchased a new light weight field easel – for which I had constructed a small painting tray. I was anxious to test out my new rig. I had remembered experiencing a breath-taking mid-afternoon-light view of a very Belgian chapel somewhere out side of Brugge. But where? So, it took me awhile to find it and then to determine the best spot for a drawing/watercolour.

I concentrated the first session on getting down an accurate drawing. Weighing the accents of the composition and adjusting to their placement on the page. Feeling the light that I wanted to capture. Took about two hours. I had already determined that I wanted to add in a few cows later, so I snapped a few photos of those meandering munchers.

At home I placed carefully cut pieces of masking tape to save the whites for those creatures before the next session. The second foray consisted of laying in washes of the colour relationships: red tile roofs contrasted to waving trees of green, the organic yet gentle shock of complements to be seen everywhere in Belgium in the summer. Add to that blue skies and long horizontal slashes of yellow corn fields, accented by pops of whitewashed farm buildings. Belgium, what a delight. After another two hours I had the chromatic start that I wanted, but since dinner called, I packed up and went home.

That second session was a nice start but my values were still too light (defo a weakness of mine). In watercolour, the eloquence of the paper needs to be reserved for the highlights and quarter tones. So of course it’s important to preserve them, but their impact only truly resonates by their contrast to well placed shadows. So I headed out for the third and final session – to intensify the saturation of my hues as well as to darken the values in the shadows. Later, back home, I removed my masking tape and drew in those sweet cows, touching them up with watercolour washes.

Vivenkapelle watercolour on hot-pressed paper. August 2023. 23 x 31 cm or 9 x 12.5 “

I’m happy with this one and feel like I am finally finding my groove(!). Less is always more: saying whatever you want to say with a minimum of means, allowing light, colour, lines, shapes and form to speak for themselves.

In this case, “moo”…

Farm on the Damse Vaart – watercolour

avond aan de Jachthaven/ evening at the marina

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aan de jacht haven Brugge/ the marina in Bruges. Watercolor on hot pressed paper. 9″ x 12″ or 23 x 30 cm.

Most of this drawing/watercolor was done en plein air, but in two sessions. First the drawing. I really like spending time getting the forms: the movement, the proportionality, the composition, right. Light and shade play a role in this but if the composition is too dependent upon the play of light, that light will be gone before I can get pencil or brush to paper. Too much changing light. Vague composition. Vague statement.

So I like to spend time with a chosen spot, feel the impulses as they present themselves, feel the shapes, the play of light, feel nature whispering and dancing through the trees while the ducks quack. And because the project is en plein air, as I’m exposed to such changes, I’m making choices.

I snap various photos along the way. One of them will capture the light I’m now intending.

the equipment of an en plein air painter

At home I refine the edges of my proposed fields of colour, and at the next (and final) session I lay in my washes. Working wet-in-wet in nature is tricky, it’s much easier to control at home, so I’m still getting the hang of it. As for the en plein air equipment: I had a very funky tripod-converted-to-a-drawing easel along with a tri-legged folding stool all of which strap to the back of my bike. It makes exploration and discovery a whole lot easier. (Thankfully the tripod part has since been upgraded 😉 ). In any case, the image here above is what I came up with.

And now, time to move on to the next…

de Coupurebrug, Right, July 2, 2023

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Coupurebrug, Right. Watercolor on hot pressed paper. July 2, 2033. 9 x 12″ or 23 x 30.5 cm SOLD

After creating a watercolor of the view to the left from the Coupurebrug, I decided to create its companion piece, the view to the right.

Pictured here is a watercolour created in three stages: first an on site drawing, capturing the composition, proportions, viewpoint and conditions of light. It was done late morning on a very calm, sunny day. Perfect. I snapped a few photos for backup and went home. Soon, the weather turned windy, rainy and cold, so I decided to work from my photos for my beginning washes.

Some exciting stuff began to happen, particularly in the sky – which had been cloudless but suddenly had clouds. Fine, I’ll take that. Things continued this way until I had something I really liked but also knew it was unfinished.

I waited until a morning presented itself in which the light was good. Principally, I wanted to be on site again, feel what I feel and make the final choices principally to punch up the foreground. Today presented itself as a possibility. I rushed out for a quick session. The wind was very active and blew my stuff around. No matter. I got what I wanted, so this is the finished piece.

Both watercolours are for sale. $100 each, unmatted, unframed. Shipped anywhere for an additional $30 (approximately). Proceeds go the the Vrienden der Blinden.

de Coupurebrug, Left, June 15, 2023

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Coupurebrug, Left. Watercolor on hot pressed paper. June 15, 2033. 9 x 12″ or 23 x 30.5 cm

Our trip to Australia re-whet my whistle for exploring landscape using watercolour. I had begun re-exploring watercolour a bit last summer in the studio, but otherwise, it’s been awhile.

So on returning to Bruges, my thirst has been excentuated by the height of the summer solstice. Here, the days are long and warm, the nights are even longer. The effects of sunlight playing over the flat land with its canals, paths, bridges, trees and fields leads to endless sources of delight.

As I explore, I find I am refining my taste in tools and working methods. For example, I consistently find myself choosing a hot-pressed satin-finished paper in contrast to cold-pressed textured ones. Art shops these days stock mostly cold-pressed paper; it appears to be in style? I’m thinking that’s because spontaneous brush strokes, evoking grand abstracted images do very well on such a surface. But for me, because I enjoy rendering the fine details of a light soaked landscape, hot pressed paper wins. Hands down.

Then there’s the wcblocks themselves. Watercolor pads can be glued down on one side only, resulting in curving and buckling when the paper gets wet. Again, that may be OK for quick, vital brush strokes on cold pressed paper, but hot-pressed paper possesses not only the capacity to render fine detail, it also possesses the capacity to receive multiple washes. It’s important, especially when working wet-in-wet, to avoid that buckling, if possible. Buying watercolour blocks that are already glued down on all four sides instead of “pads” glued on just one side is yet another fine point.

The landscape imaged here is an early summer’s evening over the Coupure. It’s from a bridge near to our house. I pass by almost every day and have noticed that looking right (see watercolor created a few weeks later) or left are equally exciting, depending on the time of day and conditions of light. So I finally took my pad and pencils out last week to capture the composition seen here. I knew from experience, that the boat arrangement along the canal changes every day, so in that first session I spent time getting down a realistic drawing, trying to get the proportions right, and feeling the light that I wanted to capture. I took a few photographs so I could finish it in the studio if the boats changed. Sure, enough, when I went back the next day, the arrangement was different, so I finished with my watercolour washes in the studio.

If you want to achieve a subtle sense of light within a realistic motif and in watercolor, as I tend to want to do, it works out better to finish such a painting in the studio. And hot-pressed paper lends itself to that: fine details, multiple washes, gentle refinement. I do enjoy an en plein air approach to painting when the conditions warrant. This just wasn’t one of them.

Northern Australia – a journey in watercolours

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My husband and I recently returned home from a month-long sojourn in Australia. Two and one half weeks of that time was spent on a boat exploring some (for the most part) inaccessible sites along northern Australia’s coastline, from Cairns in the east to Broome in the west. It’s a big continent, thus in the process we traversed 2155 nautical miles(!). I had expected there would be opportunities to paint a few watercolours along the way, so I brought the materials to do so with me: thankfully, watercolours pack light.

Here below then are a few of the ones I consider keepers. Many were completed on land en plen air, within the hour or so allowed to me in the schedule of an ongoing journey. A few were completed later on board ship from a photograph. However, in all cases, I was able lay down the composition first, as a reaction to the scene before me. They are listed in chronological order.

Lizard Island. May 15, 2023. Watercolor on cold pressed paper. 6" x 12' or 15 x 30 NFS

Lizard Island. May 15, 2023. Watercolor on cold pressed paper. 6″ x 12′ or 15 x 30 cm. NFS

Lizard Island, a beautiful beach, north of Cairns, where the snorkelling was good! It was my inaugural watercolour of the trip, which turned out relatively well, despite having forgotten to bring a water well and blotting sponge(!!). It is listed NFS because we gave it to a crew member whose birthday turned out to be the following day.

Cape York. May 16, 2023. Watercolor on cold pressed paper. 6″ x 12″ or 15 x 30 cm

Cape York, containing the record of a blustery and overcast day at the northernmost tip of the Australian continent. The sea was strangely opaque with the unearthly colouring of a dull light green. Due to the changing light, sharp rocks and milling shoreside passengers, the painting conditions that day were deeply frustrating. I felt lucky to have gotten anything at all intelligible.

Mornington Island. May 18, 2023. Watercolor on hot pressed paper. 9″ x 12′ or 23 x 30 cm.

Mornington Island, located in the Gulf of Carpenteria. It’s a dry and dusty island hosting a settlement of the Lardil people, one of the original tribes of Northern Australia. They greeted us with their dancing and welcomed us to their art centre, where art is both created and sold. As I walked, returning to the boat, I was struck front-and-centre by this composition of a light green building with its orange tin roof. Thankfully, a crew member took a photo for me (I had forgotten my camera) as we were all herded back to the waiting zodiacs.

Victoria Settlement. May 21, 2023. Watercolor on hot pressed paper. 9″ x 12″ or 23 x 30 cm.

Victoria Settlement is located on the Cobourg Peninsula. It contains all that remains of an 1838 failed British settlement. Wandering the area I was struck by the symmetrical ruins of the crumbled-and-still-yet-crumbling chimney stacks of the four remaining homes. Perhaps they could have spared themselves the effort? For Shelly had already penned Ozymandias in 1817. But that’s not how ignorance and vanity really work.

Koolama Bay. May 26, 2023. Watercolor on cold pressed paper. 6″ x 12″ or 15 x 30 cm.

Koolama Bay. We were anchored here one afternoon when I had elected not to join the zodiac boats touring the mangroves (and the crocodiles). The composition noted here moved back and forth into view as the boat swivelled ever so gently on its anchor. The view became more and more spectacular as the setting sun illuminated the sandstone cliffs rising above the turquoise water. Wow! When nature displays its magnificence to us all we can truly do is marvel.

Jar Island. May 27, 2023. Watercolor on hot pressed paper. 9″ x 12″ or 23 x 30 cm. SOLD

Jar Island. We came ashore here one morning. With the others I hiked up a short incline to view the amazing ancient art painted on the cliffs and caves above. Ha! But there appeared to still be enough time to capture a small watercolor of the shore-scape, or so I thought. After the composition, I was laying in my washes when the crew herded us once again back onto the zodiacs. Had to finish it on board afterwards, though I already had a good idea of where I wanted to go.

Hunter River. May 28, 2023. Watercolor on hot pressed paper. 6″ x 12″ or 15 x 30 cm.

Hunter River. We were moored here for the afternoon after an exhilarating morning helicopter ride to view Mitchell Falls. It’s a seasonal waterfall, which torrents as one cascade during the rainy season but subsides to a trickle by the end of the dry. We caught it as a series of four – so between effulgence and poverty. For this watercolor on the left, as in Koolama Bay above, the sandstone cliffs of the Kimberley rising out of the turquoise waters were nothing short of magnificent, not to mention the added spotlight of the setting sun.

I hope you enjoy these and yes (except for Lizard Island), they are for sale. Fifty dollars a pop, unmatted, unframed, plus the cost of a mailing tube (say, three dollars) and postage (usually around twenty-five dollars, depending on your location). All proceeds will be donated to our favourite local charity, Vrienden der Blinden (the seeing-eye dog-training facility for West Vlaanderen in Belgium). Please contact me if you are interested. Sizes and locations are noted under each image, so please specify.

Circle, De Lovie, Poperinghe

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Arched garden walkway De Lovie. Watercolour on hot pressed paper. Alizarine Crimson and Forest Green. 9″ x 12′ or 23 x 30 cm. SOLD

About a month ago, out near Westvleteren, we stumbled across a large domain called De Lovie (nice name, eh?). The whole area is run by a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children, youths and adults who have mental handicaps. But besides the buildings dedicated to such assistance, a large part of the domain actually contains a beautiful heritage castle, its memorial chapel and landscaping including a lake and English garden. John snapped a photo of the main promenade to the castle with its dappling light. The haloed effect in such a simple, one point perspective piqued my interest, so I decided to try to render it within the circle motif.

The main challenge really was how to render the highlights. In watercolour, this actually doesn’t mean rendering the highlights but rather allowing the white of the paper to (strategically) shine through. In the past I’ve experimented with latex masking fluid, but for anyone who has actually tried it, you realise very quickly how difficult it is to control. Large areas are possible – at the cost of your increasingly clogged and ultimately useless paint brush. Fine details however are not. But recently I discovered a product that dispenses the masking fluid through a very fine, narrow tube, creating a very fine, thin line. Ha! So, after washing in the starting golden circle and laying in the composition, I used my new handy-dandy dispenser pen to block out various areas of highlights quickly and playfully. It was better than a brush but even so, still difficult to control. After everything dried I began to lay in my washes, wet-in-wet.

I had already decided to use just a two colour, complimentary palette, so washes of Forest Green were matched up against washes of Alizarine Crimson. I knew this approach would also allow for chromatic changes within the golden circle, but that would be out of my control. Nice! The washes went quickly and quite well, though I couldn’t really see what I had. After they had dried I rubbed off the latex. The results were stunning! – at least from a light point-of-view – even though it was also immediately clear that I still had a lot of form to recover/describe. Thus, a few hours of open brushwork gave me the basics, but it took another week of diligent searching/reclaimation to discribe the overall formal coherence.

I’m pretty pleased with the result. The latex itself creates hard edged highlights. So I really like how the strong highlights of the cross branches in the foreground stand out. Compositionally, they mitigate too, against the centrifugal pull of the circle and the walkway’s halo. The foliage, too, has nice hard edges. Still, I’d prefer that the dappled spots on the ground were a bit softer. Sigh. That gives me something to work on for next time. 😉

Circle, Along the Damse Vaart

The Circle Game or Homage to the Circle

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I returned to Ruskin’s “The Elements of Drawing” this summer. (It’s always good to start anew and never assume that you know whatever you think you know – because most likely, you don’t) So as I was playing around with watercolours, Ruskin suggested creating shapes and filling them in, beginning with the most basic of shapes, the circle. I was creating these sun-like shapes on a landscape oriented pad, 6″ x 12″ and immediately wanted to superimpose a real landscape over it. So I did.

The Schipdonk Canal. Watercolour on cold pressed paper. 6″ x 12″ SOLD

The first in the series, was of a scene along the Schipdonk canal somewhere around Eeklo. Since I thought it turned out rather well, I thought, hmmmm…., this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship? I liked the serendipitous contribution of the sun-like circle, compositionally and chromatically, enhancing its one-point perspective. I also liked the idea of doing the landscape in a simplified colour scheme of two complimentary colors. I began to imagine doing more, particularly of my favourite scenes around here.

Farm on the Damme Vaart. Watercolour (Alizarine Crimson and Thalo Green Light) on cold pressed paper. 6″ x 12″

The second in the series then is of a farm along the Damse Vaart that I have painted in the past. I really like the sweet, afternoon light on the farm buildings in the middle ground but have struggled to make it an interesting composition. Would this circle approach help? I decided to try it with a green/red palette, The result was OK, but compositionally, still rather static, so I enhanced the golden circle with an external wash of purple. It felt pretty rad. 🙂

Framed. $50 or 50 Euros plus shipping and handling.

Bend in the Damme Vaart. Watercolour (Thalo Blue and Burnt Sienna) on cold pressed paper. 6″ x 12″

Well, OK, what’s next? I have plenty of favourite spots around here, so I chose another one further along the Damse Vaart, this time at its bend (which I have also painted in the past). I ended up doing three different versions of it: the first in a ‘normal’ colour scheme’ (boring!); the second in Thalo Blue/Burnt Sienna but with a horizon line that was about a 1/2″ too high (ugh!, toss); and the last one (pictured here) with the Blue/Sienna colour scheme but a lowered horizon line ( it finally felt right chromatically and compositionally).

Framed. $50 or 50 Euros plus shipping and handling.

Luckily these small experiments are easy to do so there’s more to come. Stay tuned…

Please contact me if you are interested in either of the DaamseVaart pieces.

ellentrezevant

a portfolio of my artwork

Category Archives: Watercolors

Postcards from Benisanó

Vivenkapelle, Watercolor

Farm on the Damse Vaart – watercolour

avond aan de Jachthaven/ evening at the marina

de Coupurebrug, Right, July 2, 2023

de Coupurebrug, Left, June 15, 2023

Northern Australia – a journey in watercolours

Circle, De Lovie, Poperinghe

Circle, Along the Damse Vaart

The Circle Game or Homage to the Circle