Waterlilies in Chateauneuf

Anna Karin Fast worked for a long time on these "pebbles"... It is an interesting development to follow, with the pebbles attracting more attention because the background is contrasting more... 

Again we were a small group of die-hards last time. Same reason as last week for most - flu, nasty colds and other winter-illnesses hit hard at the moment! But the aquarellista's-present, did a great job on yet more impressions of Chateauneuf!

Sandra Seymour-Dale started on a very interesting watercolour - can't wait to see the finished product!!

Cathie van der Stel finished this fabulous and romantic door in the village...

And Birgitta Engvall did it again - what a mysterious, quiet atmosphere!

We also worked on another subject, "water lilies". Not all of those are finished, you'll see them in next post, but two are definitely worth showing now!

First of all Denise Holt visited. Originally French, she lives and works in the US. She is an aquarellista too and as long as she is visiting France, she'll work with us! Here are her water lilies:

And Anna Karin Fast did a version - in her typical, spontaneous and "fast" style

More later - I will participate in "les petitis formats", an exhibition organised by the artothèque of neighbouring village Valbonne - and I will be posting about that for sure...

5 Aquarellista's present...

Last week most members of our aquarellista group were in bed with severe colds - but five die-hards were present! We had a fabulous afternoon, with lots of tea, extensive discussions about composition, colours and contrast, and deep concentration! There was a "plants" group (Anna Karin and Bibbi) and a "Chateauneuf village" group (Sandra and me) and then Cathie - who worked on both!

Anna-Karin Fast worked on her tomatoes,
aren't they gorgeous...:

Amongst other things Bibbi Isaksson painted this
stunning waterlily (very large size as usual :))

Cathie van der Stel started -and finished- these gorgeous
stylized flowers

And Sandra and I have started working on Chateauneuf Village, I painted a view of one of these lovely little streets and Sandra started on a great looking door (the old village has many of those! Cathie is painting one too...)

Work in progress: Sandra Seymour-Dale's door in Chateauneuf, autumn leaves to come...

View on a sunny street by Marina Kulik

Other Projects

Apart from our weekly theme (see post below), a lot of other aquarellista-projects are going on - that are definitely worth showing! Here some examples... Flowers in progress by Marina Teding van Berkhout

Reflection by Cathie van der Stel

Pebbles by Anna Karin Fast

Fantasy landscape by Birgitta Engval

Vases and water

The week before last we started with a still life of flowers in a vase filled with water. This led to the need for more research on water and glass:

The "breaking" of the object (like a stem of a flower) by the water...

Bibbi Isaksson

The composition of water, glass and flowers I:

Titia Brandwijk

The reflections of light in the glass:

Beverly (now back in the USA for a couple of months) 

The composition of flower and glass II:

Sandra Seymour-Dale

The reflection of the background in the glass:

Bibbi Isaksson
 

Reflection of the light in the water:

Lies Timmermans

The importance of contrast and background:Karin de Bruine

And then there is some work in progress, from Ann amongst others - to be shown next post...

View on the village

Detail of "View on St Tropez" by Cathie van der Stel & Marina Kulik

This post is not about a project the aquarellista's have done, this is about something we may do in the coming weeks! As we are going to participate in the second exhibition in the Salle Pontis in Chateauneuf - because they really wanted us back - I 'd like to suggest to create all kinds of views of Chateauneuf... That could be the village itself, it is a truly lovely place, on top of a hill -

or we could also paint some of the many, absolutely fabulous romantic little streets inside the old center...

Below a couple of examples of views on villages - and we'll be back in two weeks with similar pictures, but now with Chateauneuf as subject!

View on St Tropez, the full painting by Cathie & Marina

Place des Arcades in Biot

View on Cannes

View on Antibes

Exhibition Bibbi Isaksson II

For part I ... scroll down to the previous post please

The other part of Bibbi's exhibition in Valbonne were her aquarelles that we can loosely summarise as "flowers"... Don't get the wrong impression, we are not talking your average aquarelle sizes, these are huge! 1 Meter by 1 meter flowers, and every centimeter interesting!

Also some oldies, inspired by or entirely done in the Hangar were on display! You may recognise one or two here as well...

And then some like these, each and every one of them with a very mysterious light adding to their story!

And last - but definitely not least, one of the most recent projects - an abstracted image of a regatta with good strong winds...

Bibbi - congratulations on your great work, your fantasy, your talent!!

Exhibition Bibbi Isaksson part I

Just got back from this fantastic exhibition in Valbonne, of aquarellista Britt-Marie (Bibbi) Isaksson!
For those of you who weren't able to go there and have a look: it was awsome, you really missed something... So instead of showing your paintings of our last session in the Hangar (I'll do that some other time) - I'll post a number of pictures of this show - in 2 chapters!

First of all: "people" - just look at the light and the shadows, and have you noticed that every single painting truly tells a story?
Well actually, some of the paintings have a story written next to them, like this one:

It even mentions us - because Bibbi got the inspirations to make the painting below, out of the statue and cat-eye-sessions that we did in the Hangar!This is the official version that she did later

...and as you can see, it has a tiny red dot in the right upper corner ...

What an atmosphere! of old movies and theatre plays...

More later!!