Here we go again...

Yep. We´re moving again. Third time in about a year. We hate it, but we are getting good at it. But this is the last time. The Great Renovation Era of our neighborhood is ending and we are looking forward to some fantastic years ahead in a New apartment, with a New balcony and a New kitchen. We are slowly entering the No Smoking Loudmouthed Bob The Builder Outside Our Window At Six In The Mornings Era. Life will be good. This blog may be a bit neglected in the next two weeks or so, though, but I will be back. Promise.

13,5 x 21 cm. Faber Castell pen (see previous post) and Faber Castell drawing ink on sketchbook page.

Time

I´m not a fan of wearing wristwatches, they tend to twist around and end up on the wrong side of my arm, and most of the days I don´t wear a clock at all - thus being a terrible model to my young students.

The last year or so, I´ve developed a slight passion for these little fellas, though, small turnip watches (correct me if my English dictionary is wrong here... TURNIP watch??). These are more in my taste than wristwatches, they are out of the way in a pocket when I don´t need them.

The right one is broken, and I just found out today that it would cost me three times the price of the clock to fix it. I said I would think about it... I hate it when things I love to use break down. I have one more with a lid on it, but it´s nowhere near as beautiful as this one, and as I´m still feeling sulky about this favorite of mine, I refuse to use the other one.

This drawing is an EDM challenge, #109 - Draw a clock you have around your house. I bought a new pen the other day, thought I´d give it a try on the clocks. I used these pens a lot a few years back and kind of forgot about them. It´s a Faber Castell technical pen. It doesn´t beat the Lamy in smoothness and ease of use, but they aren´t really in the same competition. This is a completely different thing. Nice, as a fresh change for a while.

The drawing is 13 x 6 cm, Faber Castell drawing ink on a sketchbook page.

Another life drawing session

Last night me and a friend went to another life drawing session near where I live. The lighting in this place is a bit funny, there´s virtually no shadows on the models, so I usually just concentrate on line drawing here.

I really liked the model this time. I usually find slim models really difficult to draw, but this woman had a lot of curves in spite of her slender figure, and she was really good at making poses that were both beautiful and challenging. My first thought when I saw her was that she looked EXACTLY as I imagined Modesty Blaise in reality when I was a kid. (I read a lot of MB back then.)

The original drawings are about A4 size, or slightly bigger. Here, they are scanned, resized and put together in Photoshop. (I did a bit of a sloppy work with scanning them, I know, but I blame it on a double attack of migraine earlier today. On me, not the scanner.)

Angles and ornaments...

Another drawing from our recent stay in Las Palmas. I don´t get the idea behind the balconies on some of the old buildings of this town. They are often too small to actually use and I never saw any people on them. Still they are built with such care. The ornaments are sometimes overwhelming, and it must have taken a lot of work and craftsmanship to build them. I sense a slight lack of equilibrium between form and function here, but hey, who´s complaining. They are incredibly tempting to draw, so they fill all the function I need.

14 x 20 cm, ink and watercolors on sketchbook page.

A little time off

I´ve been off for a while, spending two weeks with near and dear ones in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. Happily surprised over all that this fantastic town and the countryside around it had to offer, I have been spending time drawing and painting almost every day. This vacation has meant a welcome pause from the cold and grey winter we´ve been having in Stockholm.

Also, during these two weeks, my maths-teacher hate-to-draw can´t-even-draw-a-stick-figure mum finally picked up a pencil and a piece of paper and surrendered to my persuasive talk about how fun it is to draw. She actually let me give her some drawing lessons, and you know what? She enjoyed it! I knew she would.