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...

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.

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...

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! 

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.

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...

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!

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! 

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 ;) 

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.

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?