Madagascar landscapes in watercolors

Capturing Madagascar's landscapes with watercolors

If I have started watercolors with flowers, I soon discovered that my true interest lied in landscapes. I took time but I slowly built out skills and one of my favorite place to paint is... Madagascar. I have plenty of photographs taken by my family during our holidays there with which I am slowly building my skills.

This was one of my first attempts in May 2021 (I had started watercolors in April 2021). I had just bought some art supplies to complement what I had at home.

The upper part is a landscape I had painted for the first time in May 2021, on a canvas paper. I tried it again in April 2022 on Arches hot pressed paper - a high quality paper. There are still some things to improve, but I love to see the learning curve in images!

One year later, in January - February 2023, I went back to my love for malagasy landscapes. This time, I had planned ahead the composition and tried out on my sketchbook a few ideas on how to render the coconut trees. I particularly focused on how to give depth to the landscape, by having several layers of coconut trees.

May 2023. My last work was for a gift. Again, I planned again the composition on my sketchbook. To give more interest to the colors, I started with a wet-on-wet technique where I put all the colors to the paper and let them bleed in one another.

I cannot wait to continue working on such landscapes. I love the earthy tones and the atmosphere of the photographs. I still want to improve in capturing this atmosphere in my paintings, without sticking to the reference photos. 

Sorry for the bad quality of some of the photographs which were taken under a bad light...