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! 

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.