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.