Car drawings

We´ve been doing some driving lately, and I´m always so pleased when my dear M drives, so that I can spend my time in the car drawing.

These are three pages from our latest little trip, all done in the car, with an ink pen, a Niji waterbrush and some watercolours. I like drawing in the car, because it forces me to make quick decisions about what to draw. I look out the window, memorize the landscape and then draw more or less from memory. It´s fun, and it´s quick, and I often find a lot of inspiration in these pages afterwards. They are not so thoroughly done (except perhaps for the trees this time, I worked a lot on those), so they leave a lot to imagination. I often find I can make bigger paintings of them later on, or work on the sketches some more, exploring colours or textures or whatever the image invites me to do.

The car is one of the places where the Niji waterbrush does an excellent job. I don´t like painting watercolours with a waterbrush if I can find room for a jug of water and real brushes, but when in a small space, or somewhere crowded, waterbrushes are a must for me. They are very good for smaller sketches, as long as you don´t need big even washes of paint.

16 x 21 cm, Lamy Safari, Noodler´s black and watercolours on Arches Satin watercolour paper.

Sketchbook pages

Thought I´d give you a peek at the latest three pages from my sketchbook. They are basically just drawings from bike rides in Stockholm. The first sketch is a pencil drawing from Kungsholmen, where pigeons have chosen a statue as their home base. Underneath is a watercolour without drawing first, always difficult but good practice.

The next page is a collage of sorts. I decided to draw everything on the same page as I moved through town, so it´s a sign above a store front, a stone lion from the government building, some people from various places, a street light. There´s actually a man drawn in pencil between the two women, but I decided not to paint him. The watercolours were added afterwards on this one.

The third page is from two different places in town. The top one is from Old Town, I sat in a street café and drew a door on the other side of a little square. Old Town is funny, because everything is a bit lopsided and crooked, no angles are right, so you have to really look to be able to capture the perspective correctly here. If you try to use logic your drawings will end up all stiff and strange. The second drawing on the page is of some houses at Hornstull, in the southern parts of town. I tried colored pencils for once, thought it would be useful for fast sketches. I like the Faber Castell pencils, but I hate their choice of colours for the 12 pencil set. Not at all what I would have chosen. For instance, there are no good greens for trees, which would be ok if there was a good blue to mix with yellow, but there are no decent blues either...

16.5 x 22 cm, pencil, Lamy Safari and Noodler´s ink, colored pencils and watercolours on Arches Satin paper.

Skeppsholmen

Biking into town today, I stopped to do a drawing of the view across the water from Skeppsbron. Stockholm never seizes to amaze me, I find so much inspiration here.

14.5 x 12 cm, Lamy Safari, Noodler´s Lexington grey and watercolours on Arches Satin paper.