My Art Workshop

Today I had company while drawing. My kid went with me for an expedition to the forest near our home. Somewhere out there we knew an old tractor was waiting for us to come by. So we did. He appreciated the visit, I am sure. All rusty and flat tires, broken windows and leaking oil, he stood there patiently as he has done for many years, while we drew him. We had great fun drawing, even though we only stayed with the old tractor for ten minutes. The wind was cold, and the sun was setting.

My kid drew the tractor from the side. He is much better at placing the drawing on the paper than me. He is so cool!
My drawing is a more a frontal “shot”. I ran out of paper, so front left wheel is a bit squished.
For a ten minute drawing, I am OK with it though. The colors were fun to add in Photoshop. I played around with effects and brushes to try to somehow get that weathered rusty look.

Today the sun was shining and it was a perfect day to get out. I wanted to try out drawing what I encountered, concentrating on the important lines and capturing the essence. So I brought pencil and paper for my walk. I am happy about my sketch of the birch tree I met on my way and I think I captured it OK. It was a nice walk. But I must admit it’s a challenge drawing anything when standing with nothing to lean the sketchbook, on apart from my arm.

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 🙂

Today I had a visitor. Actually he (or she) came by yesterday too. But today my guest stayed for hours thoroughly enjoying the visit and I just had to take advantage of that. So today’s sketch turned into today’s photographs instead. May I present “Lepus europaeus” also known as European hare.

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.