Monday, December 31, 2012

Amaryllis

This is a flower usually seen around Christmas in Sweden - I don´t know if it is also a traditional christmas flower in other countries? I love them anyway and I have been longing to paint some. I didn´t have time for more than a sketchbook page this year however.... But maybe next year? It is not so far away... And a new sketchbook awaits since this was the last page of my old one! New times ahead! For next year I wish for more drawing time.....

Happy New Year to you all!

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Sketchbook pages from the country side


Sketching time is still rather limited, but I have managed some spreads lately which I haven´t had time to post. Now I have tried publishing with photos from the telephone. The image quality is not so good, but on the other hand it makes the whole process easier so I might be able to post more frequently instead...

Anyway, the kids have been spending some time in a stable/farm which has a 4H organisation attached to it. This means they get the chance to learn more about animals - they help out taking care of sheep, rabbits and horses - and they get to ride which they love. I have spending my time there helping them out, looking out for the baby and also drawing a bit. I have thus made my first attempt at drawing horses and other animals. I would say there is room for improvement, but at least it was fun :)

 This is the view across the street from the farm, some church I don´t know the name of...

A sketchbook spread I made with some attempts at horses, a rabbit and some other stuff. 

All drawings are made in ink and watercolor on Saunders Waterford, Satin, in my sketchbook.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Back on planet earth (I think)


Well, time flies... My baby girl (yepp, it´s another girl...) is already five months and routine is slowly coming back to Casa Wolf! This week I even painted a little - first time I brought out the paints since she was born except for one (1!) sketch that I managed to do on our summer vacation. I did an exercise with autumn leafs for our painting group (instructions in swedish here) and we had a lot of fun with it. Hopefully this means a fresh start and I will be able to make use of my painting and drawing gear again! Maybe even some new EDMs? I hope the group is still alive...

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Life drawing.... model!




I have been terrible at updating lately... There has not been much drawing time since the kids have been constantly sick. And then I am just too tired also. Right now I am mostly spending my time waiting for the baby to come out.... I have done some café drawings but I haven´t managed to take pictures and post.

I did do something I have never done before the other week though - being a life drawing model! It was kind of weird, but it was just a group of friends so it went alright - I wasn´t too nervous :) I don´t really feel that my body is my own right now anyway. One of my friends took some pictures so I could join a bit in drawing myself also - first I did a sketchbook page, but chose the wrong paper, the one that doesn´t work with watercolor so it just got messy (bottom one). Then we did some watercolors from our drawings with the group (top one). I just took some photos with my phone, so the image quality is really crappy. Sorry about that!

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Experimental flowers




I have been playing around a bit with experimental watercolor techniques lately - these flowers for example. I have started out by painting some random shapes on a piece of scrap paper and then pressing it onto watercolor paper - kind of like a print. This is a way of starting that I really like, since it gives some randomness and is a great way to get over the fear of the white paper! I have then added some color in various layers to "help out" the shapes that I like. I also let watery paint run down some of the paintings for impressions of stems, and added dark dots in the middle of the shapes to increase the impression of flowers. I don´t know if they turned out as masterpieces, but it was fun to play around with anyway! 

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

More trees...

Watercolor on some unknown piece of paper (the back of an old painting) Ca 15x20 cm

I decided to try the technique that I used in my sketchbook for the winter trees on a little watercolor. I have basically used a bit of plastic to scrape color onto the paper for the birch stems. I experimented with doing it on dry paper and wet for different effects. I also used it for a demonstration and it turned out to be a fun thing to play with. I wrote an instruction for it on my Swedish website, but you can always look at the pictures ;) 

Monday, March 5, 2012

Orchids

Ink and watercolor in Moleskin watercolor notebook.

I really love orchids, but I find it hard to paint them for some reason. I always end up with extremely boring paintings. This was a kind of experiment as a way of thinking new in different styles and compositions. The left one is a blind contour drawing, just to get going. In the middle, a classic sketchbook style attempt and to the right a little more experimental style with ink and watercolor on wet paper. Now all that remains is to turn the ideas into watercolors somehow without loosing the expression...

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Spring is approaching!


Watercolor and ink on Saunders Waterford Satin, in sketchbook

A quite certain sign that spring is coming soon is that the little kids that knock on our door regularly stop selling cookies and start selling tulips. Much healthier! I have a serious problem saying no when they want to collect for something and I start to think that the rumor is spreading...

Monday, February 27, 2012

Winter

Watercolor and ink on Saunders Waterford Satin, in sketchbook

It´s still winter here, but on some days one can feel spring approaching! I did this drawing a week ago or so, and then everything was still covered in snow. Now the ground is partly green (well, grey) at least!

Oh, yes, and winter is called "vinter" in Swedish if someone wonders about the spelling..... It´s actually funny - winter and summer are quite similar words in English, Swedish and German (my three main languages) - winter/vinter/Winter and summer/sommar/Summer but spring (vår/Frühling) is a completely different one. I wonder why....

Friday, February 17, 2012

Some drawing gear

Watercolor and Noodler´s Lexington Grey ink on Saunders Waterford paper in sketchbook

I just drew the stuff I carry around for drawing and painting the other day. I have a "large set" of portable  equipment consisting more or less of the above. A couple of extra pens and pencils and an eraser didn´t fit in to the drawing, and a small bottle of water and a flat brush as well. The colors are W&N artist colors from tubes, which I use to refill the half pans in the little plastic box. It is Winsor yellow, New Gamboge, Indigo, French Ultramarine, Phtalo Turquise, Winsor purple, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, Burnt Umber, Ivory black Scarlet Lake and Permanent Rose. I am thinking of exchanging Burnt Umber for Vandyke Brown though. It is a color I just recently started to use and I like it so far. You might notice that I don´t use any green color - I haven´t been able to find one that I like so in the middle mixing compartment I always have an ongoing green mixture, usually New Gamboge and Indigo, but with other colors too depending on what color green I want. I sometimes squeeze a bit of New Gamboge tube color directly into the compartment which makes it easier.

Almost at the same time as I did my drawing, I got my hands on a couple of flex nib pens from Noodlers and started to think about a real mini-kit with drawing stuff that would fit into my regular small handbag. Now, I sometimes leave my drawing stuff behind if I don´t think I will get the time to do something, and then the opportunities always seem to show up some how. So I made a mini-kit with one (Flex) pen, one pencil, a portable brush, a waterbrush and a little plastic box where I glued 9 half pans. That equipment I could always bring with me along with a small sketchbook - I´ll report back if it works for me.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

February coffebreak


Last week, I had coffe at a really nice little Café in Nyköping, where my mother lives, sitting out in their backyard in the middle of the winter.... They have a kind of a green-house, heated and with tables for guests, where you can sit all year around. Nice! I enjoyed a "Semla" a Swedish traditional bakery that we eat in February, actually, it is not supposed to be consumed before the official day of the "semla", which is the day before Lent, so I cheated a bit... I somehow seem to do that every year!? 

My pictures get horrible, by the way. I really need to get a scanner, but I don´t know which one or how to use it. Ideas, anyone?

Monday, February 6, 2012

New sketchbook

Since I think the Moleskin I have been using is quite hard to draw in, and also does not hold enough water for a watercolor notebook I bound a sketchbook of my own, with different paper in it, to try out some options.

The above is made on Saunders Waterford Satin, which I quite like. The color is added wet on wet and spreads nicely, I think. It dries a little uneven though, so even washes are a bit hard to make.


The second orchid is done with the same technique on Arches Satinée. It is similar to Saunders, but the paper dries even more unevenly, which has a tendency to create backruns and "cauliflowers" when it dries. Also, for some reason, the ink smeared more on this paper! I used Noodler´s black, which is designed to dry waterproof in contact with the cellulose in the paper. I don´t know if this paper contains less cellulose than Saunders since the ink didn´t get waterproof as it should?

The above drawing is made on Saunders again. This time, I wetted the paper completely (and added the green color in the middle of the flower wet-on-wet) before I let it dry and then did the background. This is the way you normally work with watercolor paper since it is wetted when stretched for a painting, and this sure did the trick. It was much easier to create an even wash this way.

Monday, January 23, 2012

International sketchcrawl #34


New year, new sketchbook, new mission.... There has been limited time for sketching lately and thus the blog has been rater inactive. I decided to take it up again, and a friend and I challenged each other to do some kind of artistic activity every day - even if it is only a five minute pencil drawing. Just to get into the flow again... This weekend we went to meet with other sketchers at the 34th international sketchcrawl gathering in Stockholm. We were six people meeting at Citykonditoriet, which is an old café in the center of Stockolm, with a lot of interesting interiors and details. We had planned to move on to some museum, but we had such a nice, relaxed time that we just kind of got stuck there!

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I also did an after-sketchcrawl drawing of my husband reading later that afternoon. It doesn´t really look like him though. I would have needed a pen with an extra-fine nib for the details in the face - now they just look a bit messy. He thinks I was generous with the hair though - maybe wishful thinking?