Gandi quote

Be the change you want to see in the world - my favorite Gandhi words....

This is one of the images I did as part of an assignment to design desktop backgrounds for computers and/or phones. I tried to think of something I would like to look at myself the whole day :)

PS/Watercolor collage

 

I have been playing around trying to learn Photoshop in order to be able to do something about the ugly photos/scans of my drawings and paintings - and I decided to also try to learn to do collages and other fun stuff. This is not the most beautiful work of mine, exactly, but a fun experiment. I have simply taken a little drawing my 5-year-old forced me to do ("draw a baby mermaid for me pleasepleaseplease"), cut it out in PS and placed it on top of a mix of two different watercolor backgrounds. Not so pretty, but a fun technique to learn, which hopefully could come in handy some day....

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... 

Illustration assignment

I am currently taking an online course in illustration, which is very exciting. It is based on assignments that are turned in first to the othter students for commenting and then to the teacher for comments and grades after changes have been made. The first assignment was to illustrate the month of April for a fictive calender printed by the city Malmö, Sweden. As I have been there only once, I had to rely on Google to provide me some inspiration. After trying some different subjects and styles I settled for the above watercolor/ink motive of the bridge between Sweden and Denmark along with some spring flowers and birds. In the background, hardly visible, is the wind farm Lillgrund. I wanted it to be a bigger part of the composition first, but I could not really fit it in. Below are some other ideas I was working on, in a very different style.

This is a famous building in Malmö (Turning Torso) along with some typical spring attributes. It was a quick sketch on paper, which I added some color to and then added the background in Photoshop. I don´t think it turned out so good though - I would have wanted to do something funny with the backhround working with textures, but I am still struggeling to learn the basics of PS. I realised it would have been easier to work with if I hadn´t added the color so I did an experiment....

 

...with the above linedrawing which I scanned and colored in Photoshop. I think one could do something more interesting to background and colors here as well with a bit more PS-skill... For comparison, below is the same drawing, but hand colored. It´s the same one in two versions, to demonstrate another problem that I constantly have: the first one is a photo, which makes it too grey and ugly. The second one is scanned, which makes all the light colors dissapear. Any tips as how to solve either of these problems would make me insanely happy....

 

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 no 14 Draw a figurine

Edim no 14 - Draw a figurine. I don´t really collect figurines, so first I went through the kids toys, but then I realised that I have a small collection of angels, which are really christmas decorations, but I let them sit in my book shelf all year around because I like them so much. This one is attached to a small plate and it kind of looks like it floats around in space on a little round cloud or something...

Edim no 13 - draw a pillow

This is Edim no 13 - draw a pillow. Even if the number on the page says 12 (I messed it up...) and the pillow is actually a cushion... You can´t always get everything right :) This is a cushion sewn from my favorite fabric pattern - Loops by Josef Frank. I would like to get a matching curtain, or just a large piece of fabric to hang behind my sofa, but it costs enough to feed a small village of starving children so I have to live with a pice of IKEA-fabric behind my sofa that almost matches the cushion, but not really....

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....

Edim 4 - draw your socks

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

EdiM #3 Something that represents joy

Every day in May #3 - draw something that represents joy.

Well, first I thought about the kids, obviously. In fact, when I woke up this morning I had great plans to draw them. Then, however, we had one of those days.... I guess any parent has been there - flower pots turned over, kids tumbling down the stairs, baby eating mud, ice cream smeared in the mother´s hair, toilet paper torn to tiny pieces all over the livingroom floor.... And that was just before lunch ;) Therefore, drawing time was kind of scarce - to say the least! (Nor did the kids bring me much joy today to be perfectly honest. More clean up work and a couple of nervous breakdowns....).

Therefore, I decided to draw some painting gear. Painting or drawing is the one thing that can always make me relax and turn my mood around however down I feel. Also, art in general makes me happy so my drawing gear sits in a cup I bought at the Zorn museum (Anders Zorn was one of Sweden´s greatest watercolor artist during the last century. Here is the watercolor on the cup) in Dalarna. I was there with a group of friends that also bring me much joy in life - we meet up every other week to draw, sketch, or do some other creative work, drink tea and chat. And did I mention we laugh a lot? So there is pure joy x 3 sitting in this drawing for me!

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.

Some spring flowers

Just doodling around a little playing with negative painting - it was quite a long time since I did some regular watercolor painting - not just sketchbook pages or illustrations so this was fun. Watercolor on Saunders 300 g fine grain.

Sketching tools, or the portable studio...

The name of this blog, Annas Ateljé, means Anna's studio in swedish. The truth is that I don´t really have much of a studio. I do have a corner in the basement where I can keep my stuff and a small table to sit and paint at. In theory, this is very practical since I would not have to clean up my stuff every time I have painted. However, in practice, I don´t spend much time there. It is hard to find time to just sit down and paint at home with three kids hanging in my skirt and all the dishes and laundry staring at me.... Also, when I do have time, I much prefer sitting in the living room or at the kitchen table. So the solution has been to develop a kind of a portable studio. In a middle-sized handbag I keep most of what I need to sketch and to paint smaller watercolors:

Among the contents might be found a water bottle, a foldable mug, a travel kit with paint, some brushes, a miniature ink bottle, some pens and pencils, a miniature spray bottle, a squeeze bottle of masking fluid and some other random stuff. I also keep a couple of small watercolor paper blocks and my sketchbook.

This way, it is possible to quickly get set up to paint or sketch anywhere. Even in the bathroom...  It so happens that this is the room with best lightning in the house. It also allows instant access to water, a floor where I can splash around all I want and, as an added bonus, it provides an alibi - I can say I need time to take a shower and then sneek off to paint. One does get quite desperate sometimes on the quest to find time to create...

I also have a kind of emergency kit which always sits in my small handbag - a box with nine half-pans (glued in and refilled with tube paint), a water brush, a foldable travel brush, a pencil, a Lamy Safari with grey ink and a small Sharpie marker. This way, I can just grab my sketchbook or paint on something else if I  have forgotten it. I sometimes also keep a postcard size watercolor block in my bag. I find it is very good practice to paint with a limited palette and I must say one can get along quite well with just nine colors. I vary them a bit, but in the box above I keep Indigo, French Ultramarine, Cyan (from Lukas), Raw Sienna, New Gamboge, Winsor Lemon, Vandyke Brown, Winsor Violet and Permanent Rose. In the 12 color box I have the same colors plus Perylene Green, Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber at the moment.

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.