20th- 21st December. Special guest artist no.2: Liz Porter

21st December: Liz Porter

21st December: hyacinths brought by visitors on Sunday. Another really lovely swedish thing- bringing flowers when you go to someone's house. Now the flat smells amazing when you walk in the door.

20th December: ha! He's not looking down (much) in this one...

Continuing with the idea of having guest artists...My sister-in-law Liz has been staying with us for a few days so she appears here as a special guest artist. Now she's on a plane somewhere over southern Sweden...but her lovely drawing of a cardboard owl remains here.
More of her drawings here:
http://itsallabitsketchy.blogspot.com

16th- 19th December

16th December: new tool- water soluble graphite pencil. Very cool!

17th December: another of the occasional 'oops I'm about to go to sleep and I haven't done a drawing yet' series...

18th December: just before our mince pies and mulled wine party.

19th December: not from life! Skogsrå, the fairytale maiden with a hollow bark back.

14th- 15th December: including working on self portraits, agh!

14th December: oh, another kitchen sink sketch.

15th December: self portrait sketch

Some thoughts on self portraits: as soon as I try to draw myself everything I've ever learnt about drawing seems to go out the window and it's a truly horrible experience. Possibly this is worse because of the memory of the number of times the same thing has happened...but the experience seems to bring back all the feelings of despair followed by rage that drawing used to elicit in me. So, yesterday I battled with myself, set a timer for 5 minutes and set to work.I won't inflict the results of the first few sets on you; this is one of the last ones, after a good hour or so of serious practice.  Not as bad as I first thought...

7th- 13th December

7th December

8th December: practising for winter by drawing (outside) wearing mittens 

9th December: we went to watch the bandy- a bit like ice hockey, but played on a bigger, outdoor rink with more players and a ball instead of a puck. It was sleeting and felt quite cold- though not as cold as when we went last winter and it was minus 10C!

10th December: as the caption says, drawing (while hungry) to make the food cook faster... If only that were true.

12th December continuing the occasional series in an old copy of Strindberg plays. Thick black ink shows up best and gives the most satisfying effect. 11th December has gone AWOL. After almost a year of doing a drawing a day it's become quite rare that I manage to completely forget to do at least one. But on this occasion I seem to have managed it- I can't find it anywhere and have no recollection at all of doing a drawing that day.

13th December: the view from Kulturhuset again- from a different one of its many floors this time. Lucia Day in Sweden- everywhere I went in Stockholm there were groups of people dressed in white robes and singing- usually very beautifully in multi-part harmony- and groups of teenagers who had obviously just finished but were wandering along humming to themselves and occasionally breaking out into song. Apparently under the old (Julian) calendar, 13th December was the shortest day of the year, so it made sense to have a festival celebrating light on that day.

2nd- 6th December: erm, more lights!

2nd December: the star lights that are everywhere...

3rd December: continuing the light series. Is this becoming an obsession?

4th December

5th December: a non-stop 10 minute practice

6th December: looking down the middle of Kulturhuset- it's quite a tall building! I wouldn't have thought I'd enjoy drawing an escalator, but there's always a first time...

27th November- 1st December: more lights and more people practice: can you tell it's getting very dark here?

A mini-series of quick tone-only light sketches: 27th and 29th November, 1st December

Monday 28th November: more lifedrawing...

Wednesday 30th November: a new one- portrait painting. I don't remember the last time I tried to paint a portrait, so it's good practice anyway.

Thursday 1st December: sketching the lights out of the library window. The unidentified 'structure' is a big piece of, well, sculpture I suppose, in the middle of the roundabout at Sergels Torg in central Stockholm. It looks a bit odd and grey during the day, but it comes into its own when it's lit up- and shines from the inside- in the dark.

21st- 26th November: lifedrawing, cafe drawing and an assortment of lights

Monday 21st November: krokis (lifedrawing) at Tellus Bio

Tuesday 22nd November: two versions of the same cafe scene- my two favourite styles at the moment.

Tuesday 22nd November... as before!

Wednesday 23rd November: journal page. Christmas trees are springing up everywhere!

Thursday 24th November

Friday and Saturday 25th and 26th November: cooking nuts on Friday night.The beginning of the weekend's food extravaganza! Unfortunately Saturday's sketch is not really representative of the astonishing quantity and quality of food we were treated to as a Thanksgiving treat- (thanks to an American friend not going home then...) but there was too much going on and for once I actually didn't feel like sketching. The star lights are everywhere now- either lamps like this one or hanging from special sockets installed in the ceiling, and nobody in Stockholm has curtains so it's beautiful when you walk down the street in the dark and see them all.

16th- 20th November

16th November: imagination drawings

Journal page from 17th November

18th November

19th November, extract from journal page

20th November