Wednesday, 06-Jul-11 15:46:00 CEST

Watering can with basket of flowers

You are wondering why this painting is having so little contrast. This is close to how the painting is really looking like.

I made this painting 1997. At that time I was a beginner on aquarelle painting. When you are a beginner you have plenty of things to deal with and contrast is the last thing you are worried about.

For me the reason for this is lying a bit in how I learned painting aquarelle. I came from the drawing and paint was something that overwhelmed me. I was taught to paint from light to dark. That is very logical when you think about it because you cannot remove paint so easily on an aquarelle painting so you are usually building up the painting from light areas and bit by bit adding layers to build up darker areas.

For me as a beginner this was a challenge. I don’t know how to do it differently but the result was very often paintings without contrast. These days I dare much more and the more contrast I achieve the more successful a painting is.

At the front you see a watering can made by tin. To the right of the watering can you see a basket of flowers. At the back there is a hood on the side.