Eyes

Last week a small group of aquarellista's sat together for a nice and relaxed bit of painting, without result obligation, just for the inspiration and to have a good time... Despite that, the results were actually quite interesting:

Not quite finished but cuteness all over the place! Seal by AnnaKarin Fast

Beautiful eye of a snake also by AnnaKarin.

We played with transparent paint on paper with reptile eyes as inspiration.

Bibbi Isaksson did her own 'things', in this case a portrait in her own indistinguishable style

And a version 2 of her glass still life. Version 3 to be expected!

In beautiful colours, the eye of a gecko by Cathie van der Stel. Typical for her, a lot of detail, subtly painted in with unparalelled patience !

Marianne van Wijngaarden worked out "how-to" paint a birch tree. The result can be obtained in several ways, one of those... a credit card!

Aquarellista Start up

Last Tuesday die-hards Bibbi, Cathie, Marianne, Sandra and me started the new aquarellista-year without any form of bang... We set up a still life out of bottles, and Bibbi, Cathie and Sandra used that as input for their very personal impressions:

Bibbi Isaksson's still life. Loosely based on the original - but primarily made with her personal colours, shapes and typical atmosphere...

Same in Cathie van der Stel's version! Same input, different outcome (to be developed further...) with the brightest blue and a very interesting background

Sandra Seymour-Dale's colourful impression - note the festive champagne fountains! (Effect of salt on the wet paint)

Marianne van Wijngaarden and myself digged a bit deeper in the loose, wet-in-wet style that she would like to master! As it is a technique that I do not use for any other thing than backgrounds, where accuracy and control are not so important, I enjoyed to work together with her. We took as an example an aquarelle from http://www.watercolor.fr/ (another aquarelle blog).

For the wetin-wet part: lavender fields and a mountain - wet the surface and mix different diluted! shades of blue, lift the paint where it should be even lighter and add more pigment for the darker parts. Then a small farm with windows and trees (wet on dry).

And lots of white to be left out!

It was a good, simple exercise that combined colour mixing, controlled painting on a wet surface, keeping the result simple and spontaneous. Worthwhile doing and repeating!

Last part of the Triptych

Before we start again with the Aquarellista group I'd like to use this space to tell about a long (literally!) aquarelle project: I finally (after over10 years) finished it! Up to last month it existed of two parts that (typical for a lot of my abstract work) in itself was divided in parts. It was one of the first "DNA" paintings... every ribbon is symbolic for a "life"...

Those "lives" of course are pure imagination, they come out of my fantasy - but for me they are real and happening, some happy, others sad, some short, long, shallow, deep, colourful, monochrome, dancing, moving, still... all influenced by external events (water, the background, each other...). The 3 paintings are 1.50 meter high, I worked on loose sheets 300 grams torchon of  38 x 50 cm . Working on different pages has many advantages, for example, it is easier to take distance, when you work on several parts at the same time. No problem to work on a tiny coffee table if necessary, the size is manageable. Don't worry about making mistakes, you can start over and keep the other sheets that you were happy with. You can make better versions and, very interestingly, be inspired by your own work!

Anyway - I have been thinking about that final part of the triptych for a long time and finally last december I started -and finished it. Of course I have changed and made other choices while painting, the difference is very visible I think and even that gives inspiration (I might go back to that simpler way of working sometime)? Life, growth, development, combining, selecting, that is what the DNA paintings are about too. The work of an artist should be like that: constant learning, researching and developing... And it is very possible that this triptych will develop into 2 or three others! Or that left and right stay together and middle gets new neighbours... I'll keep you posted!

A Calendar for the new year!!

And...it's back to painting again :) our first aquarellista gathering will (maybe) take place next Tuesday, but that doesn't mean we're resting... I know for a fact that at least 4 of us are working really hard at the moment! Sandra, Marina TvB, Cathie and myself are painting against the clock, doing the best we can in representative portraits in aquarelle of naked women. They will be published next month, in a "Nudie Art Calendar" that will be sold for charity - Pink Ribbon. I have no pictures of the others yet, but I can show you some parts of what I did. Not the whole thing obviously - to see that -  you'll have to purchase a calendar for 25€ and support Pink Ribbon!

My model has gone through a lot, operations, chemotherapy, radiation, loosing her hair - but she has recovered - and how! She is one of the bravest women I know and I wanted to make a happy picture.

First of course the studies, sketching to get to know the person, the light, discover the best pose..

then carefully finding out the colours...

and then I (thought I) had it...

With this as a result

But then I tried some other perspectives... and this is what it ended up like for the calendar:

Happiness and freedom in sketch

And in aquarelle...

For the full images I refer you to the calendar - it will be presented somewhere in March (I'll keep you posted). In coming posts I'll show other calendar-paintings from the aquarellista's (of course only partly)