Radio days (are here again)

Now that we have moved into our new apartment, we have added a new habit to our everyday life. We bought a radio. Yeah, I know what you are thinking - what kind of a home doesn´t have a radio? We had one a few years back, and when it broke down we thought we could do without. "We can always listen over the internet", we said, but we very seldom did. It´s just not the same. The habit of listening to the radio just disappeared. Music, yes, on CDs and vinyl, but the morning news and non-stop pop was no longer around.

Now that we have this little beauty of a sound machine in the kitchen, there are radio waves in the air all the time. I can´t believe we thought we would do just fine without a radio. My reborn morning habit of listening to the news while eating breakfast is something I don´t want to be without again, and cleaning the apartment or cooking without the babbling voices of Swedish Radio P3 makes it all so much duller.

Radio has a great advantage over TV and internet - it lets you do what you want while listening. It doesn´t occupy your hands, eyes or behind. I.e. it is what you could call a drawing-encouraging media. Radio is good for you.

The drawing is 20 x 13 cm, Lamy Safari and Noodler´s Lexington grey and watercolors on a sketchbook page.

Finally some colors!

I sat down for a while this evening to try to capture some branches of this flowering maple outside our kitchen window. At least we think it´s a maple. The view is brand new, we moved in here less than a month ago, and we haven´t seen any leaves on this tree yet. (And we are not thoroughly at home with botany...)

It is exciting to follow the development of the much too early spring here, from our windows above the treetops. We have a splendid view over the neighborhood, and see the light-green shades changing from day to day. A tiny blue tit likes to visit the tree in the afternoons, I may have to try to capture that little fellow on paper too...

I haven´t felt like using watercolors for a long time now, not since we started out on this moving adventure. Too much chaos around me seems to take the energy off painting. I wrote about that over at The Drawing Club the other day, so I won´t repeat it here. Energy is back, though, and so are the colors in my drawings. Feels good.

Both images are about 13 x 20 cm, on a sketchbook page. The top one is an attempt to paint without drawing first, the other has a very simple pencil drawing underneath the colors. The leaves are drawn with a Lamy Safari and Noodler´s ink before coloring.

Getting back to normal

We are finally done with the move, and after two weeks of packing, carrying, piling, throwing stuff away, carrying some more, unpacking and fixing things, we almost feel like we have a home again. And then it took us more than a week after all this to get back online - turns out an internet connection is harder to move than a ton of cardboard boxes and furniture...

Some of our stuff, mostly furniture, kitchen gear and books, have been stored for over a year while our landlord was renovating the block and we were moving around for a bit. Getting these items back two weeks ago was a blast. Some of the stuff was carried off directly to the dustheap ("what were we thinking when we stored that one??"), but opening the boxes I felt like a kid at Christmas. I had no idea what I was going to find in them, having completely forgotten about what we put in them for storage.

The return of my grandmother´s old secretaire (drawn above) felt almost like the return of a trusted old friend. It´s like a big warm heart in our livingroom. We still have some stuff to sort out and put away, some boxes to unpack and so on, but we are slowly getting back to normal. We have a home again.

Anyway, I am back online, and this blog will be updated more frequently again. And thank you, I was overwhelmed by all your nice comments and good wishes on my last post - it was much appreciated.

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.