Hängmatta

One of my favourite lunch places in Stockholm - Café Hängmatta! They have the greatest vegan sallads and soups. It takes forever to get the food, but on the other hand you have a lot of interesting non-matching furniture do draw while waiting...

Chambres en Ville

Just a quick sketch from the room at the little gorgeous B&B I stayed at when I last visited Brussels for a meeting. I really don´t enjoy doing interious, but something about this view just caught my attention. I think it was the glimps of the old fashioned bath tub that was really inviting... I didn´t have any time to try it out though. Next time?

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

Stockholm sketchgroup, late as usual

This is one of the sketches I produced the last time the Stockholm sketchgroup (Skissa i Stockholm) met. It was end of August, but since then, a lot of things came inbetween of posting...

The most beautiful orchid ever...

...at least in my livingroom... It was as pretty when we went away for vacations as it was when we came back. This really makes me want to paint a real watercolor, but I know I always get in to trouble when it comes to backgrounds - and foregrounds. Especially tables. I just don´t know how to handle large, boring areas of brown!? Any ideas?

Where did Summer go?

I am, as usual, really, really, really behind with the posting. As you may see below, nothing has happened here since May! I think I will have to develop some kind of routine - scan and post every Tuesday morning, perhaps? Anyway, since it has been so long, I thought I would try for a kind of "summer catch-up" and publish a few selected spreads from my summer vacation, mostly spent in the Archipelargo south of Stockholm (Sörmlandskusten). It just might be the most beautiful place on earth and it is really hard to do it justice, but here goes... This time, the scanner did not cooperate at all, and the spreads with a lot of white just did not work at all, some of these below also look weird, but I decided on "good enough"- otherwise it will just never happend!

View from Lökholmarna, outside Nyköping, where we were completely alone in the bay.

 Some cliffs. I just love the look of these rocks in the archipelargo, with all different patterns and colors...

 

Ågården - a small restaurant/bed and breakfast in the beautiful little coast town Trosa. We had the most delicious meal of the whole summer here, and my mother came to visit and stayed in one of the tiny, extremely cute bedrooms.

 

Hävringe båk. This is a small island outside of Nyköping/Oxelösund which nowadays harbours a lighthouse, as well as this famous - well, I have no idea what it is called in english.... It is a building painted in white and red, which can be seen from far out at sea and which was used by sailors to orient themselfs as they approached the coast. Suggestions? (Note to self: buy english maritime dictornary....)

 

We sailed out in the hope of being able to go ashore and stay for the day, but the tiny harbour was very full (they only have like tree-four berths for guest boats). We ended up circling around it two times for photos and some quick sketches instead...

 

View from Lilla Trässö, outside of Oxelösund. A more or less perfect day.... great weather, warm water for swims, (well, around 20 degrees Celcius, just as warm as it gets here...), and a nice view!

 

Well, that was my summer.... Or parts of it anyway. Hope you all had a good one too...

EdiM catch-up 8-12

No 8 - draw a coffee pot. I don´t own a coffee pot - I brew my coffee straight into the thermo jug... As I got out the coffee-thermo-jug and the cups to draw, the kids thought it was coffee time and enthusiastically went for the cookie jar so I had to do some cookies as well...

I was away over the weekend, so I missed out on a few EdiMs and I had to do a really quick catch up of no:s 9-12: A lock, something creepy (the spider, although I am not really afraid of spiders), gloves and the oldest thing in my refrigerator. Judging by the other posts in the group, I am not the only one hiding a really old bottle of tabasco in a dark corner of my fridge...

EdiM 5-7

 I did draw one a day these days, but I did not manage to post. I posted on Facebook and on Flickr, but trying to make a blog entry from the phone is just too tedious - just writing in english with the autocorrect function constantly trying to turn every word into swedish can give anyone a nervous brakedown!

I messed up the dates somehow - this is supposed to be No 5 - draw a pine/fir/eucalyptus. Quick watercolor sketch in my temporary sketchbook on some unknown paper....

Edim No 6 - Perfume. Ink and watercolor in the same sketchbook - I aimed for loose and colorful, but I think it just got messy. Not happy at all with this one...

 No 7 - something I got for free. I got this chair from my sister - she inherited them from grandma and did a lot of hard work preparing to paint them but never got around to do it. As I got them, it was a quick job to add some color of my own choice! Nice! As I set out to paint one I realized Märta was dressed in matching clothes and I added her to the picture. The painting is done on Saunders Waterford watercolor paper, but somehow the seizing (or what it is called in english) seemed to have been destroyed on this particular sheet so the colors did not flow at all as usual. This led to my giving up almost halfway through the painting... Not a good EdiM- week....

Adventures in March....

I am running a bit behind with the posting, but here comes a little catch-up from March - just to get to the more recent sketches soon :) The above is a sketch from the Sthlm Boat Expo "Allt för sjön". It is hard to sketch environments with that massive amount of detail - I try to simplify but it just gets messy somehow...

The last sketch is a quick tulip sketch made while waiting for the family outside the kid´s sunday school. I negotiated with my husband to let me spend the time sketching and he had to take care of the baby! Then I strolled around trying to find some amazing view, but everything was just boring and it was too cold so I decided to just sit inside and sketch the first corner I could find with an empty chair!

Both sketches in pencil and watercolor on Saunders Waterford satin in my sketchbook.

Yasuragi Hasseludden

One of my favourite places in the world (oh, well - in Stockholm anyway) is Yasuragi Hasseludden. It is a Japanese SPA with a wonderful view of the archipelago from the hot baths outside. The above sketch is in ink and watercolor from a visit there with my sister a couple of weeks ago. The below sketch is in pencil and watercolor and was done when we were there the whole family on a yasuragi kids event. (Not quite as peaceful as it otherwise is at a SPA). It got a little messy - I find it difficult to simplify disturbing backgrounds, or rather, to find the right level of detail in the foreground and background....

Winter in Stockholm

Now spring is finally approaching! This has been a long winter with a lot of snow and cold. Some days that just means a lot of trouble getting the kids dressed up for kindergarden and school, but some days that means beautiful winter landscapes to walk in and to sketch! Goodbye winter for now though (I hope)!

Sketchers at the museum of modern arts

Last sunday of each month, a group of sketchers from the Stockholm sketch crawl group meet at some location to sketch, drink coffee and share thoughts and ideas. I have not participated more than a couple of times but it is always really inspiring and a lot of fun. Today, we met at the museum of modern arts in Stockholm (Moderna Museet). First, we did some view sketches from the café and then we went on to drawing some people in the lobby. These are two of my most hateful subjects - urban sketches with a lot of buildings and windows - I totally lack patience for these - and people who just refuse to stand still - I totally lack confidence fore these! But as always, the talented company I am in inspires me to at least give it a shot! I skipped the ink pens today and went for pencil and watercolor. Somehow it feels so intimidating with ink - I seriously consider skipping it altogether for my sketchbook.

Oh, and I got my new scanner/printer to work today! I don´t know if I think it produces such great results as I had hoped for, still a little blurry... But there are probably some fine tuning left to do... At least the pictures are straight now...

New sketchbook, and a challenge

I finished my old sketchbook which was a bit of a try-out of different papers and now I have started a new one which I bound out of Saunders Waterford Satin - the paper I liked most in the old one. I used some pages of a little thinner, cheaper paper as well to be able to squeeze some extra pages in the cover. I covered it in cloth this time instead of paper. I like the feel of it, but I am not sure I had the right glue to actually make it last without ripping open. We´ll see... Hopefully I will finish this a bit quicker than my last book that took me a year!

In fact, one of my goals for this year is to really get the drawing and painting activities going again! I have made a small studio out of a corner in our basement so I can always leave the things ready to go and I have made two different drawing kits to go - one mini-kit which always sits around in my handbag, and one larger that I can grab if I know I am going somewhere to paint. Also, a friend and I just challenged each other to one drawing a day for ten days! It does not have to be big, or good, or colored, or inspiring... but minimum 5 minutes a day with some kind of drawing tool on some kind of paper (be it a bus ticket, a napkin or whatever) and we have to send each other photo evidence. I will try to post some as well, but sometimes posting seems to rather keep me from drawing/painting than the other way around - as if I get a bit restricted if I know I have to present the end result to an audience.... I think I have to realise that it is my blog and I can decide for myself if something is worth posting or not!

It would be a fun challenge to do together with other bloggers though... anybody out there who is interested?

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!

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.

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!

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.