While making this little torso painting, I wished I knew more about the anatomy of the human body. I decided not to count every muscle I saw, but to look at the statue as one organic shape. What I like about this work, is the rough style in which it’s painted; the thickest strokes of paint are the highlights on the chest.…
During recent painting lessons, I wanted to try something new. I decided to go for another self portrait, but at the start I didn’t really know how to give a fresh spin to it. So I just started, and every painting session colors started to get more intense. During the different sessions, I got some good help from my teacher. Together…
Making still life paintings in oil, is great to improve your mastering of shapes, lines, colors, lighting and composition. In other words: as a painter, you can learn a lot of every still life you make. I learned a few great new techniques and ways of looking at possible compositions from the book Mastering Composition by Ian Roberts. There are…
Spring is in the air! Even in the city, I smell blossoms everywhere. When I looked out of our bedroom window, I saw this inspiring urban spring composition. I felt like painting fast and thick, so I did. Cadmium yellow is really a color you can’t do without when making spring paintings. Normally, I wouldn’t use pure colors of paint…
Art Studio Area in West German city In Enschede, the Dutch city where I live, it’s easy to take a train to Germany. It only takes one hour to get from Enschede to the West German city of Münster. In Münster, there’s a lot of artistic stuff going on. When you only have one day to see Münster, I would…
Oil paint portrait of Imke Last saturday, I had some time to paint again. The hair of Imke (the model) inspired me to paint a background in red and orange tones. I can’t wait to add a layer of retouching varnish when the oil paint has dried. Keep painting! Portrait in warm colors, ‘Imke’.
Sunset photography collage with your iPhone An inspiring idea to start with in the new year: collect a sunset every day, always using the same viewpoint. I made the sunset collage you see below already in 2012. Sunset photography doesn’t have to be difficult, when high resolutions and realistic colors aren’t the most important things. I made my photo’s simply…
A story about a fascinating artist and person I already knew the artist Lucian Freud (1922 – 2011), one of the greatest painters of his time. Or maybe I should say: I knew a few of his works of art. But I didn’t have have a clear picture of the man behind the paintings. If the person Lucian Freud is also a…
Making charcoal landscape sketches: lines & darkness A challenge: to catch the atmosphere and richness of a landscape in charcoal on paper. You don’t have any colors and for the lightest parts of your landscape you can only use paper. For me, the two most important things when making charcoal landscape sketches are: Where you put the clearest lines, the lines…
Last summer we’ve been to Thailand, a magical and rich country, with a lot of variety in nature and culture. One of my personal highlights of our trip, was Erawan National Park in the Kanchanaburi region. This park is famous for its waterfalls and lakes. I made a lot of photo’s over there. It was not always easy to avoid the tourists…