plein air 30-05-2009

Very quick sketch at the Zuiderpark today. The small size of the sketch forces me not to go into detail. Instead I focus on the main values of the composition.

Plein air 30-05

I should have been working indoors today...illustrating...but I really really couldn't resist the sunlight, so I decided to take 2 hours to paint.

Life drawing

Decided to join the students for a while in todays' life drawing session.

Moleskine gouache sketch

Even an ugly city like Rotterdam can be fun to paint....

sketch

I often grab a book or a magazine and make sketches of the pictures in it. It is fun to do, and a great way to explore new sketching techniques and keep up my drawing skills...

Belgium

I spent the weekend in Belgium, Ardennen. The weather was beautiful, and the environment beautiful. These are a few gouache/watercolor sketches.

Biking

This afternoon I grabbed my down-hill bike (not made for long flat trips...) to re-discover an area with lots of good painting spots. I hardly have any biking experience so when I reached 'mookhoek' and realised I still had 20 km to go to get home again...on a sharp saddle...

Feeling really mangled right now, after 42 kilometers. But I did see some nice places.

Plein air 24-05

Two hours in the field, great weather.

Plein air 20-05-2009

Gouache fun...

Digital sketch

Gouache study

I lost my moleskine sketchbook some time ago. After weeks of searching and hoping to find it, I decided to forget about it and buy myself a new one.... Here's my first gouache sketch in it...

Plein air 17-05

I decided to paint the petanque court near my house. This is a spot that has history for Oud-Beijerland, although local politics will not let that stop them from building a new parking area there. Despite of the 90 year old healthy trees....
...So now they're captured in oils for eternity.

painter

I recently bought Painter X. Thesr are my first two sketches with the oil brushes...

Plein air 17-05-2009

Gouache is a great medium for quick outdoor sketches. It takes less time to pack your stuff and start painting than oils, but gouache gives you the same possibility to start with transparent layers, and then move to opaque painting.

I had to be quick this time, because it started to rain soon after I started painting. Because of that I had to make desicions really fast, and focus mainly on the basics of the composition. I would have liked to stay and add a little more detail here and there, but because of the rain I had to quit.

plein air 10 - 05 - 2009

It was a beautiful day, and I had a lot of fun painting out of doors with Arne.
Oils are great to work with, and every time we paint 'en plein air' I learn more about observing, and turning that observation into paint. I am not too happy with the result. I think my painting lacks a point of interest depth and a basic build-up. It became a bit muddy. I learned a lot though...

Plein air 16-05

Yesterday evening I saw this big depression coming...weatherwise that is. I just bought a new field easel (because I noticed how efficient Wouters' is) and decided to jump on my bike to paint the threatening sky on a glowing field. After an hour of painting the depression was on me; It started raining really hard and me, the painting and the easel were soaked. Yay for oils, no harm was done to the painting.

Plein air 10-05

A great follow up for the plein air session Wouter and I planned two weeks ago. It was raining so I couldn't use the pastels I carried with me, but today the weather was great and we both worked with oilpaint between 09:00 and 12:00. Here's my result.