18th- 23rd May

18th- 19th May: cycling and camping training trip

20th May

21st May: quick(sort of) gesture sketch

22nd May: Tyresta national park sketch

23rd May: colour chart for a new set of watercolour pencils;inspired by Sue Brown.

14th- 17th May: a cardboard owl, a national park, a bag full of washing.

14th May: the end of the tissue paper sketchbook at last. Sadly not drawn from a real owl, this is a contour-ish sketch of a cardboard cut-out that lives in our kitchen.

15th May: I've started going to Tyresta National Park for a day each week since the weather got better. It takes about an hour by bus, so is pretty accessible from the city- and it's a real national park/ nature reserve where if you leave the main paths you can see nobody all day.

16th May: one of those things I thought I ought to record as being a significant feature of living in Sweden. Not the big blue Ikea bag, obviously, but the concept of using a shared laundry room in the basement- and getting all your washing done in one big go.

17th May

11th- 13th May: Copenhagen

 Just back from a long weekend in Copenhagen, a great adventure taking the sleeper from Stockholm overnight on Thursday, and arriving- theoretically at least- refreshed and ready to go at 7am on Friday. Most of the drawing I did was in galleries- it wasn't quite warm or dry enough until Sunday to sit outside for very long.

Statens Museum for Kunst- the Danish national gallery: an installation made of brightly coloured fabric in a modern extension to the old building. I loved the way you could see the old brick building inside the airy glass extension, and some windows at the end were open so the sound of the breeze came inside.

The other superb thing about Statens Museum for Kunst: a drawing room! As it sounds, a room for drawing in, complete with shelves of paper, pencils, drawing boards and interesting sculptures and images to draw from. And not just for kids. Heaven. This plaster cast of  a roaring bear was in the middle of the room. The slight dizzying effect is due to using two pencils held together; I've decided it's good for fur texture, but the head and mouth would probably have been better if they were a bit clearer- ie with just the one pencil.

Saturday 12th May: Giacometti sculptures at the Louisiana Gallery, half an hour from Copenhagen on the train. Apart from the artwork, the building itself was worth the visit. Apparently an example of '50s discreet modernism'- lots of big glass windows and beautiful wood blending into the surrounding landscape. I could go on! One day, when we build a house...

I couldn't resist including these too...

Sunday 13th May: I was on my way to spend an hour in Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek- another big museum- when I spied a round bench on the sunny square in front of the building. Next to the bench was this olive tree-in-a-bag. Funnily enough, I never made it into the museum...

And looking the other way, this was what I could see.

5th-10th May: double pencils and contours

Continuing with the using-two-pencils-together sketches, using that technique to do blind contour drawings. And a few other things too.

5th May: blind contour

6th May

7th May: new pencil- wax based black chalk, good and sticky!

8th May

9th May

10th May

1st - 4th May: dodgy magnolia blossom and drawings using two pencils at once.

1st May: an experiment with wax crayon and watercolour, attempting to show the almost unbelievable fresh whiteness of magnolia blossoms. Sadly the white of the wax crayon stopping out the watercolour wash didn't show up as clearly as I'd hoped, but it's a technique to file away for future reference, perhaps.

2nd May: continuing the very thin tissue paper sketchbook, sketches of a small sculpture from a charity shop. The top layer is made by touch, the second one a contour drawing. And you can see a few more pages behind.

3rd May: little wooden zebra. Drawn holding two chalk/carbon pencils together, a technique that seems to be yielding some very satisfying marks.

4th May: using two pencils together again, and without looking at the paper too much: a wooden mask this time.

26th - 30th April

26th April: another day that was vaguely warm enough to draw outside, in a coat, for about 10 minutes!

27th April: thin white tissue paper in my sketchbook. One of those things you don't think of until they happen by mistake- but I really like the way drawings on several pages show through.

28th April: and the ink bleeds through several pages too...

29th April: Gällnö

30th April: continuing the theme- lots of drawings of a little wooden zebra- by touch, blind contour etc etc