My Art Workshop

In Tumblr I learned there is an expression called “Inktober”. Artists come together to produce a drawing each day in October – only using ink. Now I am a bit late for the party, but I decided I could still join.

I have wanted to draw this lady since around 7th grade. My teacher then gave us a small collection of black and white portraits for practicing drawing, and I have kept that ever since.

This lady is in the front page of the collection. I never tried draw her before today. She is hard to draw, and I knew she would be. I decided she should be the first project of my Inktober, since we were practicing portraits at my Wednesday drawing class anyway.

I was far from finished when class was over, so I had to bring her home to finish – with my kid as judge. “Mom, I think she needs more shadow there, and her eye should be like this, and her hair more curly…” He is really good at seeing where the problem areas are.

Despite the fact I accidentially dripped ink on her white forehead not once, but trice I ended up with a lady, I like 🙂

Larger resolution

A few days ago I finished this drawing. It’s the first one where I haven’t corrected much in the post process. Instead I drew, and redrew, and redrew again until I had the proportions right. This pose is hard to get right since she has a soft human form, while she is resting on the rounded, but still strict form of the chair and also she is holding the mandolin.

It was very hard to get the balance, the weight distribution and the pose right. And then there’s the challenge of getting the likeness right and the folds of the fabrics. But all considered I think the drawing turned out ok 🙂

Larger resolution

I cleaned up my art drawer. I had so much fun finding all my old drawings, cleaning them, scanning them, and collecting all the good ones in a binder. A few of the very old ones I had fun playing with either finally finishing them or just playing around with them in Photoshop. The tree is the old, giant apple tree in my Mom’s garden, which was cut down last year. I had only finished half of the drawing but yesterday it happened. Finished and colored too.

Larger resolution
The castle is a very old papercut I once made. It was just cut in black paper, but I used an other drawing as a masked overlayer texture in Photoshop and I really like the colorful effect it had on the papercut. It reminds me a bit of Sonia Brandes art, whom I have always admired.

Larger resolution
Wednesday it was time to get back to the drawing and watercolor class. The mountains are now done and I had fun playing around with all kinds of techniques to see what worked and what did not.

I was happy I had bought that white marker pen. It was brilliant to add details to the reflections in the water. Spraying paint randomly from an old ruined paintbrush on selected parts of the drawing, worked well too. The trick was to mask off the areas, that did not need paint, with a paper napkin. I am not too sure I like the added dark tush in the foreground, but it was still a fun experiment, I wanted to see how the very shiny surface of tush would work with the watercolors.

Larger resolution

Tonight was my first session at the croquis/portrait class. The model was awsome. It was great playing with charcoal and being messy with my drawings again. The coming weeks I will have so much fun with this every Monday afternoon 🙂

Larger resolution

I like how this one turned out. This is my cousin Hanne saying hello to one of uncle Ejners Jersey cows in the 60ies.

My family and I are visting my Mom at the moment. It’s time to learn how to bake “Guldkage” (golden cake), a family recipe I’d like to be able to master as well.

Larger resolution

Today’s pencil drawing is inspired by a photo from the old family album from 1971. It’s my uncle at my parent’s wedding. He is reading greeting cards adding his great sense of humour.

Larger resolution

The drawing for today is my mothers aunt, Johanne, playing with their dog in their garden. Their dogs were always called Foxy, so I guess that’s this ones name too 🙂 The reference was another old black/white photo probably from the 1930’ies in the old family album.

Larger resolution

I have decided to practice drawing people. Both my own photographs and the photos from my grandmothers old albums are excellent as references. The people are my family, and the settings and fashions are interesting and charmingly old-fashioned.

I decided to forbid myself to draw with the pointy end of my pencil today. That way I could not draw the meticulously perfect lines. When I could draw only with the side of the pencil, I had to use my shoulder instead of my wrist. Drawing from the shoulder is a good way of getting more confident lines.

Larger resolution
In the end I had a person in my sketchbook. I need to ask my mom which uncle I drew. I think it is uncle Ejner, but it might be uncle Peter. Fun fact: Ejner and Peter were both farmers and they were brothers. They married two sisters, aunt Johanne and aunt Karen, my grandmothers older sisters 🙂

I thought the treasure on board the Alcandora needed an illustration too. So here it is.

My brother sailed with Georg Stage, a Danish training ship, years back. There’s just something very fascinating about the old tall ships. I would like to be good at drawing them. This was great fun to make and did not take long. I think I worked for around half an hour including PhotoShop magic applied.