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.

Some illustrated quotes

I have been working on some illustrated quotes that I wanted to hang in my kitchen for a while. I did some messy backgrounds in mixed media (or, well, I took some messed up scrap papers and did a little watercolor doodling and some prints on them) but I never really got around to writing. Once I took a calligraphy course and since then I am almost terrified to write anything. It was really anti-creative with a lot of instructions on how you really really really had to learn all the abc´s before you could start inventing letters of your own and let your writing free etc etc. So I always worry too much about the letters getting perfect and exact which means, at least in this case, I was too scared to get started. What if one letter got ugly and I had to start over with the background? So, finally, after finding some inspiration in the wonderful blog of We Three I decided to skip the calligraphy pens and just get going with a permanent marker! It is not the most beautiful writing in the world, thats for sure, but I am quite happy with the end result anyway! 

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?

Art exhibition at work

I am currently on maternity leave from my job but I was invited to exhibit some of my watercolours in the new dining room (or whatever you call it in an office building!?) a long with a couple of other colleagues who also have different creative talents. I couldn´t frame the pictures since there were no hooks on the walls - they had to be hung with needles only - but I think it turned out ok anyway. I didn´t have a special "theme" for the paintings since I wanted to show a bit of everything I do (more or less). Here are some pictures of what my part of the exhibition looked like anyway.