Aquarelle Tuesday from 2 - 4.30

The Aquarellistas - hard at work

Last Tuesday our group took a day off, due to the 'Fête du Travail', but the week before we had a great afternoon with several highlights!

One of them our Aquarellista pal Bibbi Isaksson who has moved to Sweden but visits France from time to time - so she could join us last session!! Everybody was delighted to see that she hadn't changed one bit (well, she was less tanned than we are of course) and that she didn't loose her talent...

Roly and Lesley were back too, and Lesley worked very hard on her Carnival de Venice Picture - with a remarkable and super detailed result!

Impressive - and expressive Carnival picture by Lesley Bufton... What a patience that girl has!!

Beverley is back from the US - and with an amazing speed and accuracy produced the painting that Cathie, Anna-Karin, Sandra and myself had created for the Café Culture Expo... OK, slightly smaller, but still...

Bev's version of the Carnival's parade

A great bridge to the other work is Edith Alborni's feather girl. This painting is not yet quite finished but it has the mysteriousness of the masks. It is very well done, although there was a little worry with the masking fluid that she used on the plumes, that was very hard to remove. But with an eraser and a lot of perseverance (read very hot fingers of the continued rubbing) it worked out well and as you can see it is sensational!

Feather Girl by Edith Alborni...Look at that eye!

Brigitte Jansen is working on an image of a crocodile for two weeks now, she's been researching the effects of the background by using another medium - pastel crayons...

Both pastel and aquarelle version look pretty cool!!

Roly is the proud painter of this beautiful aquarelle of the yacht 'Sea breeze'. 

And we close today's post with the work-in-progress by Cathie van der Stel.

THis beautiful still life (that will no doubt be finished soon) is just an exercise for things to come... The aquarellista cookbook for instance...

Poetic Pine Cones by Cathie van der Stel

Smart use of cling film

Sometimes it is such fun to use other materials in your aquarelle! For instance: cling film. It gives an effect that would be hard to create with a brush, it is lively, spontaneous and you can never be completely sure what it ends up like... Mmm sounds like aquarelle watercolours! It is a great way to fill up a background if you want it to be interesting but not too dominant. Many have experimented with it and last week Agnès tried it for her 'collage girl'

Make a wet -in-wet background, with lots of pigment(s) and put wrinkly cling film on it.
Let dry (in the air, don't use a hairdryer) carefully take the film off and behold the result:

Collage Girl by Agnès McLaughlin

At the same time Roly worked hard and steady on his own -perfectly drawn!- boat:

Roly Bufton's yacht

He is visiting her this week so high expectations for an all-inspired finishing of this project...

Brigitte finished her original scarf - she has now achieved mastery in folds and stripes!

 Brigitte Jansen's bedouine-like image of a scarf



There is also a lot of good work in progress - Cathie van der Stel started the last part of her series of sea beasts - a lobster (they really come in spectacular colours but this one is coloured according to Cathie's imagination...), Mieke van Papen began with an abstract looking jellyfish, Edith Alborni worked on a picture of a running leopard, Lesley Bufton almost finished a very happy painting of a couple of  ducks (or geese?) and Lies Timmermans started a promising graphical nude... I hope to show you all that next week!

We finish with Edith Alborni's creative take on last week's subject:

Edith Alborni



Aquarelle Tuesdays 2 - 4.30pm - Marina Kulik

Miniatures and Magnifications

50x70 cm Seahorse by Cathie van de Stel - Mindblowing!!

Cathie actually received applause when she showed this during the evaluation last Tuesday. Believe me, the photo doesn't do it justice, this aquarelle has a perfect balance between colour, experiment, light, dark, fun, depth and mystery. And as you can guess, it is an enlargement of the real thing - the size of a seahorse or hippocampus varies between 1 and 20 centimeters...

Our challenge du jour (and for the coming weeks) was to take a colourful picture or still life, and create a composition with a miniature of the whole thing and then a magnification as the background. Most of us have started and not yet finished - and it already looks spectacular so I'd like to share two morre with you:

Mini and Maxi parrot - beautiful work in progress by Georgina Hole 

Miniature of ivy with berries - painted from a still life and  to be continued tomorrow by Brigitte Jansen

And there was other pretty impressive and interesting painting going on...

'Portrait of a woman'  by Sandra Seymour Dale

A very characterful portrait with an interesting symbolism. Note how the chicken wire (imprisonment) changes into flying birds (freedom) and the vague silhouette of a man, partly in front of the woman (taking her light) -  Have a long look at it and give it your own interpretation... super interesting!

Agnes McLaughlins' colourful chickens (their names: Oh, La and La) 

A super happy & funny picture with a whole different use of chicken wire (in white crayon) and I particularly like how the eyes are done... Click on the picture to enlarge

Lesley Bufton's Tropical house with Palm Tree

Lesley had a good old struggle to get the background in the colour she wanted, and after a first wash of ochre did a second of ultramarine with a little bit of carmine - and then another one, which did the trick! It's not finished but you can already see the tropical atmosphere (with a rainstorm coming?) and the light and dark is remarkable...

'Tunnel' by Anna-Karin Fast

Anna-Karin finished the 'tunnel' image - which worked out very well! Then started with a big cat. She used masking fluid for the whiskers. This will make them stand out in a spontaneous background... As usual Anna-Karin painted this picture in just a few brush strokes. Here's a preview:

Roly Bufton finished his picture with little fishing boats in it - and will soon embark on a painting project that has to do with a big boat (his own). But for the time being he painted a dune, in 15 minutes and it actually looks great!

Edith Alborni finished her 'Collage' in sepia

and then moved on to 'Woman with a colourful shawl' whom I will dedicate a blogpost to after she finishes. We have enough versions now, all based on the same picture and very very different!

And the last two contributions are from Liz Douglas (who is actually working on a very interesting painting of the village Plascassier) and Judith Kuiper. They both washed aquarelle paint off their painting, Judith to make it lighter and work further on it and Liz because she was unhappy with the left part of her otherwise wonderful still life:

Phase 1 and 2 of Liz Douglas's metallic still life. Part washed out and then 'repaired'. Spot the differences! (click to enlarge)

Judith Kuipers'  Abstract Bird - all washed out and ready for the next layer...

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Until 10 January the Aquarellistas won't come to the Hangar for their weekly 'Zen' Tuesday afternoon.

We had our last gathering on 20 December and it was cosy as always, and they gave me the most wonderful gift, a beautifully wrapped handmade Christmas card, with tiny delicate aquarelles on it, put together and made into a 'whole' by Sandra Seymour Dale... I was very touched and also very excited that I now actually have an original collection of some of the aquarellistas' work in my possession!!

'Small Guardian Angel' by Bibbi Isaksson

Ball & Tree by Edith Alborni

Xmas puppets by Cathie van der Stel

Christmas Rose by Brigitte Jansen

Wicked wish by Sandra Seymour-Dale

Small Christmas apple by Anna Karin Fast

Fun in the snow by Agnes McLaughlin

Snow Man by Liz Douglas

Christmas quartet by Lesley and Roly Bufton

Robin by Helene van der Kroft

 I'll use my weeks-off to frame this wonderful gift!

Aquarelle Tuesdays 2 - 4.30pm - Marina Kulik

Aquarellistas from high heels to barefoot - and more...

Liz Douglas' grapes, ready for eating - or drinking...

'On their way to George' by Agnes McLaughlin

Dreamy portrait of a girl by Edith Alborni

Fabulous slingback by Brigitte Jansen

Amazing painting of true fatigue. By Sandra Seymour-Dale

Feet need a cool down by Liz Douglas

Swans in a Swedish lake by Anna-Kartin Fast

Mean mean stiletto by Mieke van Papen

The start of a rhythmic, graphic picture of windows by Lesley Bufton. What you see here are the first washes. They have warm colours and the final result will therefore be warm, even if the windows and shadows will be shades of (cold) blue...

Roly Bufton tried his hands on a Provence landscape, and did a good job! Note how well the dark/light contrast works (esp. on the trees)... One more to go in 2011! and then on to a new artistic year...



Aquarelle Tuesdays 2 - 4.30pm - Marina Kulik

Bye bye Bibbi!

The Aquarellista group has said goodbye to Britt-Marie Isaksson in style! We surprised her with a goody bag full of  memories, from photo's to the tea & cookies we have, the cd's we play, the (Arche Torchon) paper we use etc etc...

We didn't spend an awful lot of time working, but despite that, goodlooking aquarelles saw the light. Unfortunately my cameralens was dirty, so the pics presented here are all a bit vague...

Christmas Rose by Brigitte Jansen

Grapes by Liz Douglas

Village by Lesley Bufton

Lowering the sails by Edith Alborni

Sisters by Agnes McLaughlin

St Tropez Regatta by Roly Bufton