Tattoo hands (and more)

Like last time, the aquarellista's were going for a project where we were to be inspired by volcano's... and like last week we ended up doing something entirely different! But whatever the results were (euh, pretty good actually!) we could paint them outside, in the sun!  and that alone was inspiration enough!

Lies Timmermans painted an interesting fantasy landscape - clearly with a volcano in mind...

And the rest...

Horst, Mireille, Marianne and Ann painted their own hands - than added home-designed tattoos, for a beautiful, mysterious effect.

Ann Edwards' tattooed hand

Mireille Bonneaud's subtle, mysterious version

Marianne van Wijngaarden's very oriental looking hand - note the gorgeous background, created with salt!

And last but not least the hand of Horst Timmermans (new and promising aquarellista!)

My only remark is about the "finishing" of the hands: they will have to come from somewhere, an arm, or out of a sleeve.  That way the hand will look less like something found in an episode of CSI...

And then there were lots of other things going on! I'll keep some of that for next week's post. We had visitors again, this time two very talented youngsters, Samira and Maurice, who created several free, experimental aquarelles! Two of those are printed below:

...Maurice painted the circle of life...

and Samira first painted a great wet-in-wet background, and then added this lovely, funny cat!

Portraits in aquarelle V

Last week we got together again after the break, and the idea was to use vulcano eruptions as inspiration for a bit of abstract work... but somehow everybody present felt like working on portraits once more! So... that's just what we did - although Sandra created a very interesting multimaterial vulcano, using silkwrapping paper to give the image a bit more relief:

And then we had two guests, the niece and daughter of oil painter Véronique Vandenhoeck!

The two had no experience in painting, but clearly had talent!! Amazing work:

And then some more portraits!

Sandra Seymour-Dale has been working for weeks on her very interesting project where she painted (several copies of) parts of her face and then combinig those parts to something that resembled her! She ended up tearing the parts in even smaller parts, and created two interesting, fauvist portraits, of which the middle one actually looks like her! And apart from the result, this was also about the process, it was such fun to do, and to watch! And also a very good idea for other aquarellista's...

Mireille Bonnaud thoroughly studied the characteristics of the iris

Before she painted the gorgeous eyes of this feline!!

Bibbi Isaksson worked on two interesting, promising portraits that weren't finished: I'll show her end product in the next post, with hopefully... some inspired abstract work, related to volcano's...

The Second Hangar Watercolour Book

From time to time I give a workshop for aquarelle starters in our atelier Le Hangar.
To avoid having to print all that material every time, I combined it all into a book... The cover page is a painting by Sandra Seymour-Dale and the picture on the  back shows our Aquarellista! group...
The book (40 pages) contains exercises for 5 afternoons, as well as a lot of worthwhile hints and tips.

Below you can look inside a couple of pages by way of preview - give it a minute to load...
I look forward to your comments!

The 2nd Hangar Watercolour Book by Marina Kulik | BOOK INFO

Portraits in aquarelle IV

Last week - Last portrait session, not many aquarellistas, yet excellent results!
Below just a little show of what we did... Enjoy!

The not-yet-final multi portrait of Sandra Seymour-Dale. She is developing it further, cutting in parts, maybe tearing and then composing a new portrait from the pieces!! Very interesting project...

Sandra also painted a portrait of her friend Janet. Less experimental than the kaleidoscope one, but note the excellent upper left and right the beautiful effects of the use of salt in wet paint...

Ann Edwards finished her portrait of the Venus of Milo

Anna Karin Fast finished the portrait of her beautiful granddaughter.

Cathie van der Stel started another impressive "fauvist" portrait.

Portrait of a boy, Marina Teding-van Berkhout has a commission and practised the most difficult part, his hair: we could give input and help and as you can see she can completely trust her abilities!!

Portraits in aquarelle III

Beautiful granddaughter by Anna-Karin Fast

Five aquarellista's present last time we got together, and we produced as if we were ten...

Look at the results of only one afternoon!! I can actually report two parallel developments, one on the creation of realistic portraits, the initial objective of this "theme"... Anna Karin Fast started the aquarelle above, in her characteristic, light, direct and spontaneous style.

Ann Edwards' "Venus of Milo"

Ann Edwards concentrated on the lightfall and the representation of marble, as well as the typical features of the famous sculpture - we hope to see the finished product next week!

Bibbi Isaksson created a 'double portrait', from an old black and white picture of herself and her husband on holiday. She is still working on it, developing and researching until she finds the final shape. She experiments with photoshop:

I love the right-side eye! and the humor in the photoshop version...

Sandra Seymour-Dale and Cathie van der Stel experimented too, with portraits and colour, look at the fascinating results - to be continued for a long time!!

This is what 'the making of' looks like. Water, palettes, brushes, salt, kitchenpaper - and lots of tea!

Cathie van der Stel's latest version of her 'guy with a cold'

And another guy by Cathie

Note how natural he looks, despite the green, purple and blue! Fauvism in aquarelle portraits, it works! To be developed, as Cathie is definitely on the way of discovering something really worthwhile.

Sandra Seymour Dale's kaleidoscopic self portrait version 1

The idea was to arrange the separate pieces, put them on top of each other, to form one face. But that didn't make it stronger.

Sandra Seymour Dale's kaleidoscopic self portrait version 2

The project is not yet over, but arranging the pieces in the way shown above gives much more information on the person than a regular portrait. I think it is a great idea...

Next week: the finished results...more portraits! And then we'll go for something abstract again. On large sizes. And hopefully in great, sunny, warm, South French weather!

Portraits in aquarelle II

In our second session of the "portraits" project, we discussed the characteristics of light and shadow and creating skin colour.

After carefully writing down every colour I used to paint my hands, I discovered that "yellowish" combined with "pinkish" always give reasonable skin colour. You add more or less water to achieve lighter and darker colours and use payne's grey, other blueish tones or sepia for the shadow.

And as for shadow on a face in aquarelle: don't make it too light! Aquarelle paint becomes lighter when it dries, and the shadow part is 40% darker than the lightest colour. A good way to build up your portrait, is to start with the 'highlights', draw them with pencil if you like, or use masking fluid. Next, mix the lightest skincolour and paint the whole face with it, apart from the highlights of course.

When that's dried, add the shadow. And when that's dried, you add all the other colours for eyes, hair, lips, cheekbones, freckles etc...

Like Ann Edwards did with her portrait of Louise: 

This interesting information was used by the other participants, Renée, Cathie and Sandra on their work, of which I didn't take too many pictures! But here's the next stage of Sandra's fauvist puzzle-selfportrait.

Believe me, she looks much friendlier in real life!!

And Cathie had good fun with a fauvist experiment that turned out great if you ask me. Amazing how blue eyebrows, green skin and purple lips can look so acceptable! 

Although Cathie feels this guy has so much colours because of his very wet sneezy cold!

Portraits in Aquarelle

Our aquarellista group has embarked on a four-week "portrait" project... We started with a selfportrait.

The paintings you can admire below are a great start and an example of our different styles. Unfinished! -but I'll keep you posted on the progress...

Self portrait in kaleidoscopic version of Sandra SeymourDale

Cathie van der Stel worked on several portrait projects, (that I didn't take pictures of I'm sorry to say) but here's the beginning of her self portrait. I can recognise her from it!

Marie Dorveaux started on her self portrait with a lot of contrast! Look at the right eye - it reflects the sun in a beautiful way!!

Ann Edwards started not on a self portrait but on one of her granddaughter.

Aren't the eyes gorgeous and special!

Can't wait to see the finished paintings next week...

The beauty of folds...

A very beautiful and inspiring subject - and also a difficult one - is folded fabric. So last week we did a bit of research on satin and velvet scarves. It was great fun - and the first results are pretty promising!

Satin by Cathie van der Stel, Ann Edwards and Mireille Bonnaud (in that order)

and the Marina's who did give "velvet" a try:

Pink velvet shawl - to be finished - by Marina Teding van Berkhout

Silk scarf with black velvet by Marina Kulik

It was great fun - and we also did other stuff, which you can admire in the post below....

Views and Violets

We had a couple of projects to finish last week, before we started with the "folded fabric". Sandra Seymour-Dale worked on three paintings at the same time, one of those this stunning wave. She set it up with masking fluid, for the foam. One of the things you can hardly paint without a masking product. Using it you can work  impulsive and wet in wet while preserving the movement and spontaneous character of the white parts. As you can see Sandra did a fantastic job here! She also used salt - with moderation- if you enlarge the picture you can clearly see the effect in the bottom left hand corner.

She also worked on the Cinqueterre idea,  and used it as an inspiration for some architectural aquarelles...

Cathie van der Stel finished her version of Manarola - it has truly worked out into a stunning picture! Composition and colours and patience and antmosphere - all great!! 

And Marina Teding van Berkhout painted velvet (see post above) and violets! Note that she first painted the violets, then covered them with masking fluid and painted the background, wet in wet. After removing the masking fluid she balanced the total picture and this is the result

Cinqueterre II

Cathie, Marianne, Marie, Mireille and Sandra were the Aquarellista's present last week...

They worked in two "shifts" - made autonomous work and worked on the next stage of the manarola Cinqueterre project... The picture above gives a nice impression of our atelier Le Hangar!

Lovely aquarelle by Cathie van der Stel

Intriguing watercolour of an old Indian by Marie Dorveaux

and a very interesting version of the "four washes" exercise by Mireille Bonnaud. Note the UFO?

Poppy by Marianne van Wijngaarden

I am told that Sandra created a wonderful portrait - as a gift for a friend - but there is no picture I'm afraid... Maybe next week!

...Sandra must have been on a roll - she also made a fascinating start with her village ...

And last but not least this one! I suspect it is Cathie's...

Thanks to Cathie who organized, took the pictures and went back to switch off the lights of the atelier!

Tomorrow I'll join the group again and we'll start a project on fabrics like velvet and satin! Expect the results in later posts...