My Art Workshop

Another batch of fairly fast drawings of faces. I still use that quickpose website I found with reference pictures, that change automatically after 120 secs. But I must admit i am really tired of having to rush like that all the time. So now I cheat. When I can’t stand the fast pace any longer, I stop and go back to the references and play with the drawings till I like the outcome. That’s how I did the top two ones. The bottom row has issues, but they were done in a lot less time. I need to do a series of ears to learn how they are constructed because they are complicated! All in all I am happy about today’s result.

My mother in law has this cute, wooden, monkey, designer toy thing. I started out drawing the non-space and then filled in more and more details.

Days of vacation at my Mom’s. We have been thoroughly pampered here with bonfire nights, sailing with the old wooden ship, Castor, and a day trip to Vigelsø, a tiny island in Odense Fjord. All days have been absolutely great.

A few days back I drew a dragon as we watched “How to train your dragon”, one of my kids cartoons.

When we went to Goa in India a few years back my Mom and I each bought home a peacock feather fan. Her’s is hanging on her wall, and I decided it could be fun to draw it yesterday.

This morning I was sitting outside the tent, where we slept last night. The view over Mom’s garden was wonderful and I decided to draw part of it.

…is someone you know and love. Capturing not only likeness but also a person with all his amazing personality is so terribly hard.

Today was Midsummer. In Denmark that is a day of celebration and large bonfires. In our little village we have a tradition of gathering in our neighbor’s barn for a barbecue.

At 8pm the neighbor starts his little, old, red tractor. All the kids have been waiting for this moment. This is the time for ice cream and tractor ride. They all gather, sitting on hay bales on the tractor wagon, while the adults walk behind. Then the entire village population walks or drives to our secret bonfire place.

We all gathered wood and weeds all Spring to burn on this day. It always turns out to be a gigantic bonfire. Sometimes we build a witch doll to burn. According to ancient tradition, the fire sends all witches and other evil beings to Bloksberg in Germany, because, that is where all evil belongs…??

It’s such a weird tradition, making about as much sense, as dragging a tree into the living room around Christmas time. I have no idea why Danes seem to believe all evil belongs at Bloksberg. But my husband went up Bloksberg a few weeks back. He says it’s pure hell climbing up there on a bike. So perhaps the tradition is not half wrong ;P

As the flames dance, we sing the traditional Midsummer song: Midsommervisen
For today’s drawing I got a request from my sweet brother: Feet!
Mom is visiting for Midsummer. We had a wonderful evening and as requested: Mom’s feet 🙂

Today I found myself sitting on the step at my front door with my sketchbook, enjoying the sun and the garden. The horses grazed peacefully in the field in front of me, and everything was well in my world 🙂 After half an hour I had a nice Hortensia flower in my sketchbook.

I had a request for a specific drawing to be placed on the blog. It’s around 10.5 years old actually. But here he is. Two days old, ten years back 🙂

When I was around 2-3 years old I had an imaginary friend. Sadly I don’t remember her that well myself. I wanted her with me at all times. Mom said it was a pain getting her into the backseat of the car in the mornings… My friend was a horse.

A real life sized, living, breathing, invisible horse. The horse filled most of my bed at night when Mom was reading bed time stories for me. And of course she had to hold the book so my horse could watch the illustrations with me.

My parents were not very cooperative in acquiring a visible horse for me at that time. But from the simple logic, that if I could not have a real horse, I could at least have one I had made up, I also started drawing horses. As time went by, I learned about lines, proportions and form. I distinctly remember the day, when I suddenly jumped to a whole other skill level in drawing.

When I was 12, I was in bed with the flu. I was bored, so I grabbed a piece of paper, my color pencils and one of my favorite illustrated horse books. I started drawing, but this time I was not focusing on my dream of a horse, but instead I focused on lines and angles, shadows and light. I was almost in a meditative state for hours.

The result was a product so far superior to anything I had ever created before, that I was stunned. I started out that day with a skill level like the pencil drawing below here, which was not terrible, but also still could develop to something better. In a matter of hours I ended up with the drawing of the colored foal below, which to me seemed light-years ahead of the first drawing.

I never forgot that sudden realization, that I really can bring to life whatever I truly desire.
A horse seems to be a fitting motif for the first new sketch in my blog.

Horses are difficult to draw. They are in some ways very boxy and showing a lot of muscle and bone ends poking against the skin. But at the same time horses are rounded and elegant, especially as they move and their tails and mane flows with them. Sketching a jumping horse from imagination today was albeit familiar, still a challenge. I like the result.

Today is the birthday of my blog! I present a few of my older works as a starting point.

The portrait of Britt I made a few years back as part of a portrait challenge. I decided to add an Art Deco style to her and I like how it turned out.

As part of a biology exhibition we hoped to rediscover “Lucanus cervus”, a rare beetle, at Æbelø, Denmark. We had no luck finding it even at a location where it was present up to some of its last sightings in the country. Sadly it is now extinct here. I drew it instead, male and female.

I am not sure how the last scene came to be. I must have been watching Discovery or something, but I like the colors, the composition and the dynamic in, it and it’s one of my very first partly digital drawings.