Nighttime

Things to draw when you are supposed to sleep.

13,5 x 16 cm, Micron pens on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper.

Old and well used - EDM #164

My father´s first camera. It still works, and I have tried it, even though I have to admit that I feel VERY comfortable using my digital these days...
I should really buy some film for this beauty and take her for a test run again.

The drawing turned out a bit wonky, but hey, who cares. Old cameras are beautiful even when the artist is having problems drawing ovals in perspective... I managed to smudge the paper just before I finished this piece - the 0.8 Micron pen I was using started pouring out ink all of a sudden, I never had that happen before...

This drawing is an EDM challenge; #164 Draw a camera.

12,5 x 15 cm, Micron pens on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper.

First page

Started on my new-bound West Side Story sketchbook two days ago, at a café at Central station here in Stockholm. I did the drawings on location, painted when I got home.

12,5 x 15 cm, Micron pen and watercolours on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper (sketchbook page).

New sketchbooks

I have filled my latest sketchbook to the last page, so now I can indulge in these three new-bound beauties! I bought nine Fabriano Artistico hot press watercolour papers to fill these books with. Two of them are rebound from old books (no, I don´t mind slaughtering old books, as long as I buy them in cheapo second hand shops and am sure that they are boring enough so that no one will ever buy them and actually read them anymore), and one is bound with coptic stitch with covers made from an old vinyl record cover (AND no, I don´t mind slaughtering old record sleeves either, as long as the record is scratched and no good - good records need their covers, bad ones don´t).

I have found the best, easiest and neatest coptic stitch description so far in a book called "How to make books" by Esther K. Smith. I found it not long ago in a bookshop here in Stockholm. It´s full of smart and easy books to bind yourself, and a great plus is that the book itself is incredibly goodlooking. The page design is excellent, it´s a pleasure to browse through it just to enjoy the graphic design inside.

Anyway. I´m starting out with the "West Side Story"-book, it has a perfect format for keeping in my bag at all times. The Fabriano paper is actually thinner than the 300 gsm I usually go for (I think it´s 200 gsm). I thought I´d try a paper that isn´t so sturdy this time. It makes the bookbinding easier plus it gives me more pages per spine centimeter (ha, there´s a new term for ya!). It seems to be just as good with ink and wet washes as the thicker paper, so I think it´ll work out fine.

Snow

The view from the kitchen window changes so fast sometimes. Just when we were getting over our disappointment with the non-existing winter, and starting to look forward to spring instead, the snow comes. It´s presence wipes out all the colours on the houses below. Suddenly they are all the same shade of some unnamed yellow-gray-green... And still. It´s so beautiful. And it´s amazing that the light of day can make such a huge difference on what we see.

16 x 9 cm, pencil and watercolours on Arches satinée watercolour paper.

Time thief

When I was a kid, Sweden had two TV channels, Channel one and Channel two. Can you imagine that in these days of TV-channelmania? I used to check the TV pages (make that singular - TV page) in the paper, "nope, nothing good on tonight", so the TV often stayed turned off.

Do you know what that gets you? TIME! Time to do good stuff with.

The other night I got stuck in front of the ol´telly again, only this time I turned it off after a while and drew it instead. We have the old fat kind of TV. It´s a bit dated by now, I guess. You can´t change the aspect ratio on it and it turns a little green every now and then. But watching it closely like this for a while made me realize why I like this one better than the new flat screens with all their Fancy Functions: it has an oldfashioned on/off button that actually turns the damn thing completely OFF, not just into standby mode. That little wonder is a real time saver.

17 x 22 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s black ink, watercolours and coloured pencils on Arches satinée watercolour paper (sketchbook page).

Crosshatching, anyone?

This started out as a simple line drawing, nice and clean, and I was going to leave it that way, for once. Then I thought I should just add some hatching to show that the wood inside this secretaire is darker than the outside, so I did that. Then the drawing looked kind of empty, like it was missing something. So I added some shadows in the deepest parts behind the computer, and then I was doomed. I had to go on hatching and crosshatching until I felt I had caught the most essential shadows and hightlights of this little workspace.

I love drawings with crosshatching, I like to be able to see how the tones and shadows were done, but I HATE doing it. It gets on my nerves.

15,5 x 15,5 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s black ink, on Arches satiné watercolour paper in sketchbook.

Tulips again

You gotta love them like this, just before they get thrown out. To me, this is tulips at their best, so expressive and with strong, deep colours.

15 x 19,5 cm, pencil and watercolours on sketchbook page (Arches hot press watercolour paper).

Coldest drawing this winter

This drawing is from the coldest drawing session of this winter so far. I went out for a walk in town a little more than a week ago, and had made my mind up to do at least one drawing with watercolours on location that day.

I saw this window from across a churchyard situated right below it, and sat down on a park bench by the church to draw. Unfortunately I sat in the shadow, on what must have been the most windy spot in the whole town, and even though the temperature was about 3 or 4 degrees above zero (Celsius) my fingers got all numb in that wind. It´s been a long time since I had such a hard time to move my pen around the paper. In pure stubbornness I started colouring the whole thing too with a Niji Waterbrush, but had to give up after a few minutes, when the wind actually tore the sketchbook out of my lap and blew it away among the graves. I finished the watercolours at home.

Funny thing: I just noticed that I wrote 2007 in the date on this drawing. Am I going backwards?

14,5 x 16 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington gray ink, and watercolours on Arches hot press watercolour paper.