My Art Workshop

Finished a bunch of these Tarot cards last night. They are not traditional Tarot cards, but each card holds meaning for me.

Not the traditional Tarot cards. These have their own stories and meaning that probably only make sense to me. I made the first one in a new batch that I plan on printing on tea stained paper again.

I like the story that comes with this card and I don’t mind sharing so here goes:

Back in 1999/2000 I was in New Zealand for 8 months with my husband. We were both working on our finals for university; his work was for a phd in Quantum chemistry, mine was a cand scient in biology. I missed my family in Denmark and one day as I was talking with my dad over the phone, he went: “We will come visit for Christmas!” He had not exactly discussed this with the rest of the family, like my mom for instance, but they landed in Auckland for Christmas. I was incredibly happy to see my mom and dad but also my younger brother who had been sailing the world for months with Mærsk Line.

One day we went snorkeling at Goat Island, just north of Auckland. Now my dad used to dive back in Denmark in his younger days, but at this point he had not been doing any of that for at least 20 years. Goat Island was magical. Shallow and clear water, plenty of sunlight and an ocean of colorful, curious sea creatures. It was such an adventure and he loved it. I went swimming close by him to show him a few highlights I knew from previous snorkeling and diving trips there, when suddenly he took off diving down to the bottom to catch something. As he came back up he went to me and placed something in my hand. We were both still a meter or so under the surface so we had no words, but he closed my fingers around the object and smiled wide despite the mask and all.

It was an amazing huge conch shell he had found and given to me. Unfortunately we were not allowed to bring anything from this beach as it is a natural reserve, so I carefully placed it back at the seabed. My dad sadly died that year and I miss him terribly to this day. Sometimes I regret that I did not keep the conch shell, but I will forever remember the excited expression on my dads face as he was snorkeling in this place and when he placed this gift in my hand. And really that was the true magic in that moment, not the conch shell, even if it was incredibly beautiful.

Just fiddling around with a few new techniques of digital drawing. I found a great tutorial and am feeling inspired. Perhaps these will end up as my own personal deck of Tarot cards.

I followed along a stream on Twitch this evening where several people drew human faces to a specific color scheme and within a set time. It was great fun! What became very clear in this exercise is that it’s far easier still to draw with a reference. Drawing from memory is a huge challenge. Still fun though 🙂 The drawing is referenced from my old family photo album.

SketchDaily theme today was “Andy Warhol”. I was tired of doing fast sketches so I went with a bit of a challenge today. I found an ancient photo of me wearing my grandmothers old hat and attempted a self portrait. That’s hard! As it was done I had to figure out how to get that to fit with today’s theme so I went to play with color in PhotoShop and ended up with a version that is a bit Andy Warhol..ish.

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I still like the original drawing better, but the play with color was still fun 🙂

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My daily digital sketch. Chinese inspired war horse in an action pose, seen from a challenging angle.

Today’s theme was “Make an object come to life”. It’s usually a fun challenge and when I decided to make a reading chair that loves reading over peoples shoulders it was kinda fun to draw.

Looking at today’s work the drawings are not as polished as I would have liked them to be. But at least I caught up with the SketchDaily themes and besides, I read somewhere that the polishing of drawings carry little in so far as teaching oneself to draw. Most of the learning process is found in the composition and the fleshing out objects and proportions.

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SketchDaily theme: Suitcases. I had visited the old vintage train station at Ree Zoo during Christmas. It was all nicely decorated for Christmas and had a real impressive christmassy atmosphere with steam engine and christmas lights. In a corner I found and photographed a pile of old suitcases, that I found super charming. Today that photograph aided me in my work with this sketch. Now as charming as the old suitcases were that day, they did seem a bit boring standing there in a pile as a drawing, so the cat and umbrella was added. I think this might be a warm “Welcome Home” scene now.

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Sketchdaily theme was “Kings” yesterday. I had a loose plan drawing Gorm the old, Harald Bluetooth and Svend Twobeard – the old Danish viking kings. I did start it but then lost interest as it did not turn out as I had envisioned. I talked with my mom on the phone and she suggested a lion for the topic. I found an old photograph in my stash from 2005, Hagenbeck Tierpark in Germany. Here is my final version for the theme “Kings” – an old male lion. I can’t wait till medio March when we are going to South Africa to see the lions in the wildsite!

The entire summer of 2016 we have enjoyed the little sweet elephant that seemed to grow out of nothing and suddenly stood there in full bloom right in front of our living room windows. Where it came from is a mystery, but I know the base was once a small exotic Japanese maple tree that sadly died a few years back. Some of the other ingredients were ivy and honeysuckle mixed with various pretty weeds and flowers, that were not really supposed to grow there.

I liked our little elephant. Even as late as October/November it still stood there sweet and peacefully patient with flowers and red berries on its back, refusing to let the winter depression creep in on us too fast. Sadly in January a storm hit and knocked it to the ground, so now there is only a small pile of leaves left. Today I drew it to remember the little fairy tale that grew in our garden in 2016 🙂
I took a photo of the elephant at the end of November. Most flowers were gone by then but a few berries were still left on its back. 🙂