Tuesday 26 June 2012

21st- 25th June

21st June: Detroit Gallery & studios- where I've had a space for the last six months and joint exhibition on at the moment. I'll be spending a lot of time looking at this view this week!

22nd June: Midsummer Eve, this much bright light around at 10pm.

23rd June: watching a documentary about a nuclear waste storage place in Finland. Not what I would have considered a particularly interesting subject until I watched it, but actually a superb piece of documentary and imaginative fim making. Into Eternity- worth watching!

24th June: near the end of a 50 mile/ 80 km cycle. Interesting working with a watersoluble pencil which had got wet in the two downpours we rode through... also while standing under a dripping tree. I might have to try pre-wetting the pencil again sometime- I really liked the waxy marks.

25th June: lettuce on the windowsill is the extent to which green fingers can be indulged at the moment.

18th- 20th June

18th June

19th June

20th June: an experiment, playing around with words in Gimp so they become- maybe- like a drawing. I was very tired after a long day and our exhibition opening and had a vague idea of experimenting with a drawing with words... after all, it's all just marks on a piece of paper.
Ahem, some daily drawings are better than others!

Monday 18 June 2012

15th- 17th June

15th June: aspen

16th June

17th June

12th- 14th June




8th- 11th June


8th June: 11 quick observations in the forest

9th June: blind contour poplar tree
10th June: blind contour poplar leaf (notice a theme here? These are the trees outside our windows.)
11th June: (extract from) first portrait by touch that's not a self portrait. Maybe this technique needs a bit of work!

Monday 11 June 2012

4th- 7th June

4th June: experimenting with ink and a reed pen; now, where does this line want to go?

5th June

6th June

7th June: moving on from staring at shadows to staring at a tree- this time for a whole hour! An extract from visual notes I made at the time.

Sunday 10 June 2012

1st- 3rd June: a rainy day's walking, Kazakhstan on tv and a museum full of stuffed animals.

1st June: a particularly rainy day walking in Tyresta national park, just a quick sketch when I stopped in a wooden shelter to get out of the rain. As I sat there looking out over the lake, a woodpecker obligingly landed on one of the trees in front, though not for long enough to get a very clear sketch.
2nd June: keeping the pen moving while watching tv- a programme about Kazakhstan.

3rd June: Biologiska Museet. An old museum which consists of a huge panorama of stuffed - Scandinavian- animals with painted backgrounds and scenery that shows their natural habitats. I don't think it's changed much since it opened in 1893, and everything is fading a bit, but it's an interesting, if slightly sad place. Plus it's entertaining to try and identify all the birds and animals from the list they give you.


Thursday 7 June 2012

29th- 31st May



29th May: a quick sketch on the way to the station.

          30th May: I've been doing an exercise that involves staring at the shadows in the corner of a room for fifteen minutes and describing them, then doing the same with an un-changing object. After the initial 'What? Fifteen minutes?' (and so on...), it was interesting to notice the difference between describing something with words and by drawing- I felt that I could be more specific with words, somehow, and had to work a lot harder to be precise with lines and colours. From 'Learning by Heart' by Corita Kent and Jan Steward.

31st May: same again!

24th- 28th May

24th May

25th May

26th May

27th May

28th May