Working with pigment - Ochre

The Village of Viens in the Luberon by Sandra Seymour Dale

Some of us have been on a short painting trip to the Luberon, where we visited the Ochre Factory and had an explanation (a very LONG explanation) about how to use pigments. And because I received a set of ochre pigments as a present, we decided to have a go at it last Tuesday! The recipe is easy enough - a bit of pigment, a bit of water and - for aquarelle - a bit of gum arabic. Or well, that's how we did it. There are other media, but they all contain white and we are sworn to transparency!!

Marina dripping some Gum Arabic on a bit of yellow ochre...

Anyway - it looked interesting, and felt good, concocting our mixtures like professional witches, and the results were actually quite nice... In the meantime I looked a bit deeper into the matter and it turns out that there are all kinds of other mediums to mix with. And interesting colours, as well as a better price! Worth some more study and we'll definitely take this a step further in a later stage, but for now, look at what we created! All with the same set of pigments, the same subject (the ochre landscape) and then our own personal interpretation...

Marina Teding van Berkhout
Lies Timmermans

Cathie van der StelMarina Kulik

Wet skies

Last week the Tuesday Aquarellista's painted skies, in wet-in-wet technique. And I took some really crappy pictures - with my phone... Which is a shame because the results were truly worthwhile and the pics don't do them justice. But I'll show them anyway - they give an impression of what you can achieve in terms of mystery when you drip bits of pigment or aquarelle paint on a very wet surface. It's been a worthwhile experiment for us, definitely worth repeating.

Below a very dutch landscape with a very dutch sky in a combination of wet and dry:

Marianne van Wijngaarden

We had an aquarellista from Devon visiting, Carol. She made several smaller aquarelles, we liked this seaview a lot!

A very nice cloud by Lies Timmermans- inspired by Adrie Hello
Two nebula-like skies by Cathie van der Stel


A heavy wet in wet storm! - by Brigitte Hole

Aquarelle portraits blog

To good to let pass... If you know good aquarelle sites, or video's, don't hesitate to mention them to me so others can enjoy them!
http://oncoy.blogspot.com/

Just one Picture

This very interesting face is painted by Bibbi Isaksson , one of the first aquarellista's. It inspired us to do research for wet in wet painting - and I will post about that soon - with pictures. Am now sooo busy still with the exhibition, sorry!

Cat show has started!

Grey Kitten - wet in wet then wet on dry - now sold

OK - after three days of working really really hard, putting heavy sculptures and aquarelles in place (and then removing them because it didn't look good, repositioning them, finishing the last details & going out shopping for champagne and other drinkees to serve to our guests) we had the super-succesful vernissage of Chat'atouille on Friday evening... We must have had at least 100 people - the whole village of Valbonne was there, the regional newspaper, our friends, and of course... the Aquarellista's!!

After the vernissage we went out for dinner with most of Valbonne village until late at night and this weekend Sculptor Sally Ducrow & I started our "permanence" in the gallery... We had a lot of interest, from all over the world - and also from a local girl that immediately took the chair that originally was reserved for Sally's marble "Chat qui fait sa toilette".

She may even have kittens some day soon - I'll keep you posted!
The address of the show:

Salle de Saint Esprit
Place de l'église
Valbonne Village
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Open Tuesday - Friday 2 - 6 PM
Weekends 10AM - 6PM
-~o0O0o~-
Show closes Sunday 10 May 6PM

-~o0O0o~-

Birds and cats

Titia Brandwijk

Marina Teding van Berkhout

Couldn't resist, just had to post these birds by Titia Brandwijk and Marina Teding - aren't they GREAT... but in the rest of this post I'd like to share some of the worry that an aquarellista can have when a show is due:
You may have noticed that I haven't written much lately... One of the reasons is that I have a big exhibition coming up - of which I thought that it was quite far away but the vernissage is actually coming Friday...So all of a sudden I had to choose, finish, cut out, put in passepartout and then frame some thirty aquarelles!! (10 were already framed) And did I tell you that my car broke down...? Arghhh...
The show has 'Chatatouille' as a theme - and I am showing a lot of cats, together with my "DNA ribbons" and some other free work. (Cats are great with ribbons... Especially young ones. That's why there also are some combinations - of ribbons and cats). The expo has 40 (!) of my paintings, together with the work of the fabulous sculptor Sally Ducrow - who also shows her cats - in marble, sandstone, serpentine, metal, wood and plaster. Like me, she loves to do cats - although her "normal" work is much more serious, but the playfulness of cats attracts her just as much as it does me - and that shows... I'll keep you posted about the show, with pictures and hopefully some anecdotes... But first I have to get those 40 aquarelles to Valbonne - trying not to damage all that glass in the frames - we have to arrange the whole thing, do shopping for the vernissage and pick up some of Sally's cat-sculptures that are scattered all over the Côte d'Azur...

Aquarelle new talents II

Pear behind a Curtain by Titia Brandwijk

My aquarelle starters group is finished! By way of exam they researched "transparency". Results above and below...

We also dove into "darkness", with very interesting resultsAnother interesting (and older) subject was "boy fishing". I show this because I noted that repetition actually adds something and makes more interesting! Idea for you? I am happy to say that the entire aquarelle starters group has picked up the technique so well and so fast - with or without me they will be very much able to develop into independent and creative aquarellista's!!

Eyes

The Hangar Aquarellista's had another fruitful session, researching perspective in complicated architectural structures (pictures will be posted later), finishing projects like the "Dead Sea" above, (Cathie van der Stel) and last but not least - we toyed a bit with that beautiful theme: "eyes" - and more specific- "cat's eyes".

With interesting results!:

Birgitta Engvall

Anna Karin Fast Cathie van der Stel

Much more was painted - and that will be used for illustrations of later posts... Are you an aquarellista!? Why don't you join us! We need all the support and inspiration we can get, to fulfill the objective of becoming a worldwide known and respected movement!

Aquarellista new Talent

The last 4 weeks I have run an aquarelle starters class on Monday-and the participants have already developed to a high technical level! They understand about colours, the characteristics of the material itself, paint, paper, brushes. They have experimented with wet-in-wet and wet-on-dry, and learned how to suggest volume, shade and shadow. What also impresses me is how they all are in their own individual way developing their creativity!

These are abstracts, first painted with aquarelle paint, then washed and then all the different surfaces are given another wash that suggests volume...

To be continued...

Light!

The Hangar Aquarellista's have been playing with light this week. In a couple of different forms, "classic", "realistic" and abstract. This is a brilliant landscape of Ann Edwards, inspired on the dead sea. She has not used white, the bright orange works very well to suggest a source of light, because of the strong contrast with the cool blues and greys!In this classic monochrome nude (by Renée Richters) the parts that are not painted are the lightest and suggest a very bright light. More light of Renée Richters. We do use the transparancy of the aquarelle paint, but our style is not so soft in colour! - for us it is more the contrast that suggests light and makes the picture interesting. Both abstracts full of light, by Marina Teding van Berkhout

Estranging again - Cut it up!

The Hangar Aquarellista's were going realistic last week!

Three stages of an aquarelle by Bibbi Isaksson:

And the first stage of Cathie van der Stel's new still life (so sorry for the poor picture quality guys, next week real camera instead of phone...)

Composition by Anna Karin Fast

Anyway - one way or another most of us ended up being smart & creative: with work that didn't quite work out. As all aquarellists know it is very hard to "repair" an aquarelle without it going dull and un-spontaneous. But look what happens when you cut it up, and then not throw it in the bin - but start a whole new composition....

Landscape by Ann Edwards

Portrait by Birgitta EngvallEstranged Nebula painting by Brigitte Hole

An idea? I have always torn up a lot of my work - and use good parts again - to form a completely different picture... And also worked on smaller size papers to combine those into large sizes, which makes me think & act in a different way than I would have on one large piece of paper... See my website for examples!

Nebula's

Aquarelle by Marina Teding van Berkhout

The aquarellista member logo is now available. Let us know if you are interested to have one to place on your website - and - if you are an aquarellista that is - we'll be happy to link back to you!

Aquarelle by Anna Karin Fast

We (the Aquarellista's group that works in Atelier Le Hangar in Chateauneuf de Grasse) explored the concept of "Nebula's" this week... and the results were very very worthwhile!

aquarelle by Ann Edwards

Nebula's are colorful gases that are expelled where the stars are exploding.

Or, in official terms:

A diffuse mass of interstellar dust or gas or both, visible as luminous patches or areas of darkness depending on the way the mass absorbs or reflects incident radiation.

Aquarelle by Cathie van der Stel

Well, for us they were an unending source of inspiration - look at the power, the force, the colourfulness of this work! And it kept us thinking about the Galaxy, planets, lightyears, and how small we actually are... Luckily we have our aquarelle to express ourselves...

Aquarelle by Sandra Seymour-Dale

Aquarelle by Bibbi Isaksson