Wednesday 13th- Sunday 17th July

Wednesday 13th July, waiting for the bus to leave Gloucester for London.

Wednesday 13th- evening, at Tulse Hill station going to see Geoff.

Thursday 14th July, Clapham Junction. As Nick says, one of the busiest railway stations in Britain- and here you see two lamp posts! I was doing quick sketches every time the train stopped, and had maybe 30 seconds and whatever was outside the train window.

 

Thursday 14th July, East Croydon. Same principle as before!

Friday 15th July, a lovely day in Hove with Hels and Jake- and the best tea I've ever had in a cafe!

Saturday 16th July, Trafalgar Square in about half a minute.

Saturday 16th July, this is Ziggy, a semi-obliging sitter!

Sunday 17th July, on the train at Paddington.

And at Heathrow again, waiting to go back to Stockholm. Sunday 17th July.

Monday11th- Tuesday 12th July. Bristol.

Monday 11th. Continuing the whirlwind tour of southern and western England...

Tuesday 12th. These flowers and the jug were so beautiful I had to draw them- and then the cheery kettle caught my eye through the doorway.

Friday 8th- Sunday 10th July. Ro and Ian's wedding and birthday celebration weekend.

Friday 8th. Enjoying some English countryside after all the Swedish rock (which is beautiful, too, mind...)

Saturday 9th. Drawing this with hog-roast anticipation on my mind- you can just make out the hog-roast man serving it up on the left. And it was delicious!

Sunday morning emerging from the tent...

Thursday 7th July- travelling to London

Waiting for our flight at Arlanda airport. Everyone should have a tame engineer on hand to explain what is going on in these situations!

Drawing on the Tube- yikes! I haven't done this for years. So I was determined to start the moment we got on. Lots of people looked curiously in my direction, but it wasn't as hard as I expected.

And then, after all that travelling, a moment of (relative) quiet in Mum and Dad's garden (it's under the Heathrow flightpath...). The pots of flowers are beautiful though.

Tuesday 5th July

Tuesday 5th July. I believe this is a cement factory- it's a few minutes away from where we live across the water. The round things at the front are rather intriguing- they are mounted on what look like the bottom section of railway carriages, and have their own railway track- presumably to take the cement away when it's ready.

Thursday 30th June- Monday 4th July

Monday 4th July

Nick and Tom (I've accidentally given him a boxer's nose- sorry Tom! It's not really like that.)

We went to the islands of Karklö and Gällnö this weekend. Beautiful swimming spots- and a pile of dead reeds by this lagoon. Perfect to make a reed pen to draw the place with!

Friday 1st July

Thursday 30th June. The view from the balcony. As it's not going to be our view for much longer I wanted to record the feeling of it- and particularly the colours, which were what struck me most when we first arrived.

Monday 27th - Wednesday 29th June

Wednesday 29th- in the garden of Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde- a beautiful old house in a beautiful old garden beside the water.

Weds 29th again

Monday 27th: a summary of the day. I'm not sure what happened to Tuesday 28th- I seem to have been missing a few days recently. Sometimes it's a kind of boom and bust cycle- a few days of doing lots of drawings, then it's really difficult to do even one, or very easy to forget to do it .

Sunday 26th June- Woodland Cemetery

This is at the Woodland Cemetery, to the south of Stockholm. It was designed in the early 20th century by Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz. Still in use as a cemetery, but also visited by of groups of tourists, and architecture/ engineering nerds. With accompanying artists.

Saturday 25th June

The second day of the Midsummer long weekend- we went to Hagaparken, a large park which contains a selection of royal palaces in different states of usefulness, a copper covered pavilion and a butterfly house. As well as many, many trees, a lake and a big grassy lawn (the English garden!).

Working on the simplifying again- with a waterproof pen this time.

Thursday 23rd- Friday 24th June

Thursday 23rd June

Friday 24th June: a very quick sketch of a dragonfly, holding my breath and hoping he wouldn't move until I'd finished. A strange visitor in a 6th floor flat on a busy road...

Wednesday 22nd June- a day of drawing in Tegnerlunden with Kim, Nina and Johanna.

The first one of the day- always the hardest.

We were talking about simplifying and reducing so this was my first experiment. Also helped by the discovery that the ink wasn't waterproof!

A giant statue of Strindberg, who lived around the corner. Now, obviously I never met him, but all the images I've seen of him suggest a somewhat scrawny, wiry man- in short, what you'd expect a tormented poet to look like. So this... is somewhat ridiculous!

The other statue of a famous author in this park- a much more modest sculpture of Astrid Lindgren. She looks like a benevolent angel, enfolding a whole collection of small characters in her wings.

Monday 20th- Tuesday 21st June

21st June, the surviving rosemary.

At Moderna Museet, watching people watching a film about Siri Derket, the artist whose work and life are the subject of one of the exhibitions at the moment. I was trying to be discreet, but one of the women watching the film kept looking over and in the end it became a quick sketch of the place rather than the people. I haven't yet mastered the art of drawing people in public!

Just as I was about to leave, the most amazing thunderstorm and torrential rain began. I enjoyed watching it from under the porch, but didn't trust my umbrella to be up to the job and went back inside to do some more drawing and sit it out.

Still 21st June... the text says: Another massive rain shower... 8.30 pm (ish) still the longest day! Is it ever possible to draw a rainbow without it being massively cheesy? But it was dramatic.

Monday 20th June. Experiment. Black pen on black paper- and suprisingly it does show up.