My Art Workshop

As I had oceans of free time today, I decided to try out a drawing I knew would be difficult. This old Ford is a handfull to draw. Lines, curves, and perspective have to be exactly right for it to look good. I was not sure if I wanted to color the finished drawing, but I am happy I did. I very much like the color theme and the color pencils worked quite well for this project. Reference: One of my old photos from Egeskov Castle.

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Here is today’s sighting: Lots of Eurasian nuthatch living in the trees of Schönbuch Forest. We also met a few red squirrels and saw lots of marks of wild boar.

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Yesterday we went for a walk in the local forest, Germany. On our way back a flock of these gorgeous, super cute, and tiny, long-tailed tits came right up to us and stayed in the closest tree for a minute or so. In the wild they look like tiny flying snow balls with tails 🙂

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Just before the sun set last evening I rushed out with the camera to catch the light. It was beautifully yellow and warm. Unfortunately I got there just one or two minutes late and a small cloud ate the sun. But the garden is filled with berries in all colors. Blue, orange, bright red, and black and white. So insted of the wonderful light I caught these two colorful hawthorn shield bugs (Acanthosoma haemorrhoidale) – in Danish: Store løvtæger.

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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 🙂

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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 🙂

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A month ago I, when I discovered that there was going to be a Blood Moon, I planned to stay up and catch it. Yesterday evening the event was finally here.

So after midnight when the show started, I had the camera ready to play and experiment. The Earth shadow started to move in over the Moon and it looked very strange. I had expected the Moon to be bright red, but that was not really the case. The sky was all clear and the stars were shining so brightly, but the Moon took more a brownish muddy color. I was not sure how that photography event was going to end.

But when I finally went inside, I had a few photos that were fine. The surprising and exciting thing about those were, that when I got them to my computer and looked at them, the Moon was indeed bright orange and red!

One photo was slightly better and more sharp than the others so I’ll show it here. I have adjusted the sharpness, but I haven’t touched the colors. An amazing sight!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 🙂

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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.

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