Second assignment

The second assignment in my course was to illustrate a text that described how the Swedish like to run away from the cold, darkness and depression in winter and how many people have settled down in Thailand, either for short periods or for good... This is my result, I had trouble with scanning, or rather taking a photo this time and trying to fix any mistakes in white balance, exposure etc in Camera Raw (a Photoshop program). This is my favorite method so far, but it is far from perfect... 

Dr Sketchys Anti Art School

I have been to two life drawing sessions at Dr Sketchy´s Anti Art School at Tureteatern in Stockholm. This has really been a lot of fun, and very difficult too. There are different themes each time, the first I went to was "Manga and Anime" and the second one "History of Music". There are models dressing up as someone and posing in 5-6 minute poses. The poses are usually quite challenging (for the models at least!) with funny facial expressions (which I am never able to catch, unfortunately).  I have had real problems with my scanner lately and I have tried to scan and post but given up after half of the colors disappeared in the scanner - especially the light areas just go blank. Any ideas of what I am doing wrong? Maybe I should go back to just taking photos with my Iphone or I will never get anything out here.... Anyway, here are some of the sketches that ended up ok from the scanner.... I just dropped the rest for now!

 From "History of Music"

 From Manga and Anime

Edim 4 - draw your socks

The ugliest socks ever - pink with donkeys! Wins no fashion contests but the kids love them :)

Every day in May

Edim 1 - draw something bubbly. Lemonade.... Yummy!

Edim 2 - draw your favourite sound. Breaking waves! Or any sound the sea makes! Right now I live far too far away from the sea.... But maybe we will buy a boat this year and then there will be some sailing this summer at least!

Ok, so I will give it a try this year too.... one drawing a day in May! I will definitely have to keep it simple if I want to keep up.... The biggest problem though is to find the time to scan and post! Mostly, I fall asleep with the kids after I have read them the bedtime story. Guess I will have to try to get my butt out of the bed in the evening. Or get up really early in the morning! Trying to do something with the computer with a one-year-old, who loves to press all the buttons, hanging around the house all day is quite complicated to say the least. We also have a lot of trips and other things going on in the family this May so I will have to either take photos with the phone or I won´t be able to do it every day.

International sketchcrawl #38

This weekend a group of us went sketching in Biologiska museet in Stockholm for the international sketch crawl #38. It was a lot of fun as usual, but unfortunately it was a bit too cold.... It was around -20 degrees celcius outside and the old building was not too well isolated i guess so my fingers were too cold to sketch after a mere hour or so. It was also quite dark inside the building and stuffed animals kind of freaks me out a bit so I was mostly happy to leave the place early! We then went for lunch at Blå Porten in the neighborhood and I did some more doodling although it was a bit too crowded and too little space to really get the drawing inspiration flowing.

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.

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...

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...

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....

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.

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.