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....