Niels Henriksen Artworks

The last series on cacti paintings worked well in that I learnt more about greens. I realize I’m comfortable with greens and therefore the problem painting that launched the green series is not so much a problem with greens but more how I’m warming the highlights and cooling shadows. This year I’m again heading south [...]

This painting is the last of my series where I was exploring green and its many shades from blue to yellow. This plant is more of a succulent than a real cactus. The low setting sun was making strong yellow green tones in the bright light and the blue sky helped to created cooler blue [...]

The big problem with the web and most cameras we have is that it’s impossible to show truly saturated and rich colors. The actual colors in this painting jump out with a richness that even with my advanced Photoshop skills I just can’t render in a web format. With some of the new printers I [...]

I am enjoying these little studies but I find the abstractness with close up views are more to my liking. In this version I got from a web image I liked how the pinks were playing of the cooler tones of the greens. The greens don’t seem so difficult in these types of images and [...]

This is from an image I took in the Botanical gardens in San Miguel de Allende. In this study I wanted to play around with a larger portion of entire plant not just a close up. This is one photo where I was unable to bring out the rich colors of the plant in a [...]

The last painting wasn’t truly a study in greens as it has a lot of red, but it was one that inspired me and I felt could so do justice. For this painting a chose a closeup of an agave cactus as I found the patterns interesting and with the greens becoming lighter and more [...]

I was having some difficulty with what I thought were the greens emerging from all the leaves in a large painting of a field of Sunflowers. When I looked at it I didn’t like the way the greens were laid out. Not sure what was actually wrong, expect I didn’t convey the dept I wanted. [...]

I initially had only planned to do a series of ten, but when I got to the 10th painting, I felt I still had a couple more in me. I am glad I did continue as I feel these are the best of the set. Once again I pre-coloured the background, this time a with [...]

The last 5 weeks stay in San Miguel de Allende has been quite enjoyable. There were adventures, as they are called after the fact, which slowed things down for a day or two. I only took my camera as I felt any painting equipment would be a bit too much for this short stay. And [...]

For the 3rd set I was undertaking I decided to first paint the background a strong vibrant colour of red and blue.  I forgot to take a photo of this set but for display purposes I used an image of a later set. Gessoed watercolor paper on wood panel I like to play around and [...]