Interior in ink

Thought I´d start the new year with an ink drawing I made on Christmas Eve (the day we actually celebrate Christmas in Sweden - Christmas Day if usually more about slacking, watching good movies on TV, eating lovely leftovers from the day before and just feeling cozy with your near and dear ones). After all the celebrating and gift giving and eating, the great Calm entered my in-law´s house, and I sat down and drew this corner of their living room. I entered that "drawing zone", you know, when you just draw and forget everything around you, including time. Wonderful.

The almost horizontal line across the sofa is where I started this drawing. I wanted to get the angles of the room right before adding anything else like furniture and stuff, so I began by drawing this line, the roof line and the corner line between the two walls. Since I usually draw directly in ink I couldn´t get rid of this line afterwards, but I don´t mind. I actually kind of like it when you can see the remains of how a drawing was made.

14.5 x 21.5 cm, Lamy Safari and Noodler´s Ink in a sketchbook.

New Year´s Eve

No, I will not publish any special New Year´s drawings here, I mean, how original could it be? A drawing of fireworks? Don´t think so. A watercolor of champagne glasses? Nope. New Year´s eve is a great day, a fine celebration, but to try to draw something "Newyearsevy" just to wish you all a happy new year feels a bit forced.

Instead I´m just going to show you what happens when I get a lot of time on my hands (17 days off work around Xmas and New Year´s - yay!). I found this little gem among my other art materials, a Winsor and Newton bijoux box of some kind. I never used it much, because the construction of it irritated me a bit.
Firstly, there´s a stupid little water compartment in it (hence the little cap, see image below), containing about the amount of water that would save an ant from dehydration. How did they imagine anyone would be able to paint with so little water? Even in an emergency situation? It doesn´t take up much space though, so I can live with it. But they could have left it out of the design.
Secondly, and this is worse than the water container, there are two metal rods inside that you have to squeeze in between the half pans to keep them in place, and these rods cover quite a bit of the surface of the pans, making it hard to pick up paint on the brush.
I love to be able to have watercolors with me in a small box like this, but it has to work properly and this one didn´t.

Now, with too much time, there´s always something you can do about badly designed art supplies. I threw out the rods, and discovered that without them there´s a whole lot more room in the box, so I could squeeze in two extra pans in it. I decided which order I wanted them all in, and then I simply glued them in with a glue gun. The box is incredibly small, only 8,5 x 6,3 cm (3.3 x 2.5 inch) and works just fine if I´m not out to make huge paintings. This little fella will replace my old customized box, which has served well until now (starting to look more than a little rugged, though).

Now that you know what I´m up to, except drawing, I´ll go back to slacking and eating all this unhealthy but incredibly tasty holiday food. Hey, it´s only New Year´s Eve once a year!

I´ll be back soon with some drawings. Until then - Happy New Year!

One for the road

Christmas often means a bit of travelling for us, and this time I had the opportunity to spend the car journey drawing (i.e. dear M did the driving). Tried a few fast landscapes and the interior of our car. I always find cars hard to draw, but somehow the inside is easier to capture on paper than the exterior. I would like to spend some time practicing drawing cars, I can´t understand why they should be harder to draw than anything else, and it would be nice to overcome that difficulty. I´ll have to make that a drawing challenge for the summer (always nicer cars out and about then...).

Improvized X-mas decoration

We have relocated twice this year, due to our landlord´s renovation of the area we live in, and in a few months we are going to move once more to a slightly bigger apartment. To make this year a little easier, we decided not to carry ALL our stuff around every time we move. Instead we stored a lot of our belongings elsewhere and kept only the things we knew for sure we would need during the year. Unfortunately we managed to store all our Christmas decorations. We try to keep up a good mood by simply calling our Christmas approach "minimalistic".

Today I noticed this little still life on one of our loudspeakers. Apparently my dear M had stumbled upon ONE tiny piece of Christmas ornament, and to give the poor thing some kind of company over Christmas, he put it between the two African wooden dolls. I don´t know, I think all three look equally surprised by the situation, but I´m sure they´ll get used to it.

Decorations or not, I know we will have a nice Christmas anyway, and wish all of you the same!

Back to normal

I´ve been doing a huge project for a couple of weeks (hence no updates here), which included collecting images, drawing, photographing, scanning, printing, doing some research and putting it all together into a book, and then giving it away. It was fun, but now that it´s all done my fingers are itching for some basic drawing, drawing for it´s own sake, drawing for the heck of it, drawing because it´s fun, drawing for no good reason at all. Turned to the most boring and basic stuff at home for some inspiration, and completely lost track of time while drawing a simple dish brush. Ah, good old drawing habit. It´s good to have you back.

Arty spoon

This is one hard-working spoon, used by generations of students for making linoleum prints. It has rubbed so many japanese rice papers against linocuts that it can´t keep count of them all. It´s been bent (not Uri Geller style, more muscle-power style by frustrated students), handled, spilled on, painted, cleaned, hit, dropped and mistreated by so many hands, but it has also helped producing hundreds of wonderful prints. I wonder if anyone ever used it for eating?

EDM challenge no. 94.

Stockholm Concert Hall

It´s been kind of quiet here for a while due to work that always builds up around this time of the year, but the workload is finally getting back to normal and so is my drawing habit.

When I went to art school fourteen years ago, our teacher brought a cellist to school and let us sit and draw while this very skillful musician gave a concert. It was a magic drawing moment, and last night I was lucky enough to experience it again, with a few more musicians to choose from (and a slightly higher ticket price).

We went to a Sibelius concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Stockholm, a real musical treat, and before we went I decided I was going to draw at least one musician while there. I chose my most quiet pen, the extra fine Lamy Safari (I know, I use the Lamy all the time, but I assure you - it´s not only generally good to draw with, it´s good to draw quietly with as well) and a sketchbook with very smooth paper in it, so as not to make any noise.

I tried to be as discrete as possible, so these are very cautious drawings. I had a great view over the orchestra, and some of the audience sitting behind it (strangely enough), and drew the whole concert through.

I had the same feeling drawing during this concert as I´ve had sometimes during conferences and lectures - it seems that drawing sharpens my listening. I had the grandest musical experience even though I was totally concentrated on drawing. Anyone else noticed the same thing?