My Art Workshop

A few weeks back we had this really fun model…

I very much enjoyed creating all these fast sketches of him. I think they turned out pretty good too. I did not have enough time to color them all during class, so I continued working back home.

I had a wonderful time playing with charcoal pencils and water colors. I really like the colored results this time. I think I found a technique I want to pursue with this.
A little over a week ago I went for a walk in a wonderful icy – almost unreal – beautiful forest that I am lucky to live nearby.
There is always some tiny wonder to see there. As soon as I stepped into the forest, I was faced with the forest guard: The biggest – most marvelous and slightly scary – living bright yellow blob. Later I learned it was a “Bævresvamp” – some kind of fungis. His long formal name is “Tremella mesenterica”, but who wishes to be so formal when joining the Wood Goblin Winter Festival? He was so big and so yellow, that my camera refused to capture his brightness. I got a nice photo of his much smaller cousin that you see here under.
The guard pointed out the direction to take. Soon I met up with “Træløberen”, the tiniest little cutie of a bird, rushing up and down the trees. You might know her as “Eurasian treecreeper”. I was mesmerized. I had never seen that species before. I think I snatched at least a hundred photos. 200 meters in the forest and I had already encountered two tiny miracles!
It did not end there though. Again and again I stumbled on shapes and shadows in the fantastic light of sunshine through icy fog and old crooked trees. Soon it all grew to be wonderful wood goblins of all imaginable kinds, dancing, stumbling, sneaking and creeping through the woods.

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I had a great time with them. Until the mother of the woods poked my shoulder and went “Thank you for your visit, it was a blast! Now go home, shoo!” There are not that many creatures of that forest I would obey instantly. But when the huge powerful mother of all the magic pokes your shoulder, you do obey! So I packed away my camera, waved to her and her pet raven and turned back to my car still entirely enchanted.
As it turned out, Rasmus needed me at home, so the mother of the wood had been right – it was time to leave. I have so many fun photographs of the wood goblins, so today I turned one of them into a digital drawing.

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My Croquis course started tonight! I joined over 20 enthusiastic artists and a model for a few hours of intensive creation. It’s always so much fun and so motivating and inspiring to draw with other people. And getting the chance to draw a live model is really really great. The first fast sketches I went for just capturing gesture, but the later poses I took a few moments to study anatomy of specific body parts too.

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The poses were timed at 1 – 7 minutes. As I was wandering the room in the last break to study what other people had been doing I was so inspired by a lady who had gone for drawing with pastels. I had some watercolors in my bag, so I went for a bit of water and whipped those out with a brush and a lot of good faith to see where that would get me.

I had a lot of fun with it and I like the results of the fun playtime too. I am looking forward to next weeks class 🙂

Attempting to learn anatomy I will need to study muscles of the human body. Since SketchDaily had a “muscle” theme I joined that. So here is me trying to figure out how the human arm works.

My family and I went for a walk yesterday to a forest to see if we could find these guys. We succeeded and I snatched a lot of photos. We were getting a bit nervous as the two big males walked closer instead of moving away as the rest of the herd! In the end they were more focused on beating each other to a pulp instead of chasing us 🙂

The last two days I worked on the zebra foal. Saw him in the early morning light in a wild life resort in South Africa last year. He was super cute and the sun created a golden halo around his form.

I made a drawing for my sister in law soon to be. She had asked for a lion so I made one for her Christmas present.

SketchDaily theme was “Victorian detective”. I think it has potential to be a portfolio piece if I find a nice way of rendering it. I might print it out and play with watercolors.

Two days ago the theme was “Secret Lair”. I decided a tree could be a secret lair too.
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I am worried about my Wacom Intuos Pro tablet. It’s still new, my sweet mom gifted me a new one <3. My old one died when the power connectors stopped working and my attempts of contacting Wacom for a solution has so far been ignored.

The old one had two plugs for the power cord. Now the new shiny one only has one and it’s starting to feel rather wobbly. I bet it’s a matter of a short time before it breaks too. The tablet works in wireless mode just fine, even if the plug breaks. But there’s no way to recharge the battery.

A quick search on Google taught me that you can actually recharge the battery in a universal recharger that works with a Samsung Galaxy S2. “Girin Studio – Arts and Everything” had a blog post “Can you save a Wacom Tablet with broken USB port?“. And so tonight we had a search on Ebay. Now I am happy knowing that a recharger like that is about to be shipped to me from Hong Kong – with two extra batteries. So when this Wacom thing breaks (I am tempted to say: “As usual”. The Google search made it clear I am not alone in my Wacom struggles) I am prepared! It’s quite a relief to know I soon have a backup because I vividly remember my panic when my old tablet died.

It puzzles me that Wacom doesn’t offer an official recharger themselves, since so many people seems to be struggling with this. Or even better: Finds another more durable solution for the power plug on the tablet.

I use my tablet constantly like on this drawing I made a few days ago. I finished this Christmas-inspired gnome girl with a goose. I used it as a gift and I might use it for Christmas cards. So because of that, today’s post is only part of a painting, as I don’t want to spoil the surprise. The drawing is digital, experimenting with coloring digitally too.

Fridays prompt at Oabnormals channel on Twitch was “Plant warrior” First theme was “Toxic Tree Warrior” and the next a “Slashing flower”. Here is tonight’s result of a fun stream.

My kid and I went to the mall and I brought my pen, paper and watercolors to sketch a few random people. It still is super fun to do and a really nice time to spend with my kid. I think my Inktober challenge pushed me to learn new stuff and to be more brave and comfortable with just attacking a drawing head on with no regrets. I really like my quick sketches from today.

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