Lucky me! My husband had to go to the Netherlands for a week of work so I tagged along and brought my paints. We added a week of vacation so we were there for two weeks. What a beautiful country! The weather changes fast, one minute the sky is blue with billowing clouds tearing across my view, the next minute it’s stormy and rainy, then later the sun comes out. But that’s all part of the challenge of painting outdoors, right?
We spent the first few days south of The Hague in the middle of all the tulip fields. The Dutch export 2.5 billion tulips every year so there certainly were a lot of tulips around. Some are grown in hothouses in the winter but the majority bloom March through May.
My husband and I rented a car and we enjoyed driving through the tulip fields, stopping for lunch at a cafe in one of the tiny villages. We spent 4 days in the area and I painted a couple of small studies.
One of the challenging things to do while painting and traveling is to clean brushes. I was able to find turpentine fairly easily so I cleaned my brushes and palette in the hotel room at the end of each day. When I haven’t been able to get my hands on turp I’ve used vegetable oil from a grocery store to clean my brushes which works very well.
So after 4 days in this area it was time to drive to Amsterdam. Off to the big city!