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May 10 2012
April 09 2012
Travel Sketchbook: London, the first two days
Stoke Newington, wash added at home.
Notes from the 'Forrests, Rocks, Torrents' exhibition at the National Gallery, and a London cliché..
The first fold out spread in this book, mostly people drawn on the bus.
The back of this fold out, drawings manipulated at home and layered.
More people on the bus.
I put on the gouache grounds after I had sketched with a Rotring Art Pen (watersoluble ink), and before I used a Pentel Brushpen. I find it interesting how the gouache absorbs some of the india ink and influences its color.
Sudden rain burst in Soho, I couldn't find effective cover but wanted to draw anyway...
Stoke Newington.
March 27 2012
Studies in Memory and Repetition
I’m trying to dig deeper into my visual memory and to sharpen my perception of values. I’m experimenting with ways to make a more active use of my memory in my drawings, for example by coloring them from memory, or not drawing on location as much as just look at location, and then go home and draw from memory, or to make one drawing on location and another one back home, either with or without looking at the one made on location.
The ideas for this come from a few different sources – Loriann Signori’s blog, Nicolaïdes‘ The Natural Way to Draw (which I still regard as the best book on drawing I ever laid my eyes on), and some remarks on Turner’s sketching technique (he is said to often have only made pencil sketches on location, and filled in the colors from memory or imagination when he was back in his room).
Also, I tend to go drawing early in the morning, and it can still be damn cold at that time, and doing the washes at home gives me warmth and more control. Funny enough, the increased control that comes from working on a table and having two free hands means I can let the washes move around more freely, use more water.
P.S. Last year I wrote this lengthy posting about finding that some of my favorite watercolors by artists like Turner, Wyeth, Hopper and Sargent were done, or at least could have been done, with very few different paints, achieving their splendor through the subtle gradations of those very few paints. I am still intrigued by this – you can see in the second Turner copy above that it only uses two colors, a yellow and a blue/violet. I guess I’ll be digging for a long time.
March 22 2012
Spring Drawings from the Pencil Side
From my current sketchbook, all except the first from the side for dry media. Time and again I find that I do love pencil, even if the ink stuff is so much flashier on first sight. There is a deepness to pencil, the variety of tonal values possible in one and the same stroke, the possibilities of softness and precision. Oh, and I always wish that this phase of spring, where most trees are still bare but there are buds everywhere would last longer. So much to draw, so little time! Once all the leaves have unfolded they become so much less interesting to me.
March 21 2012
March 16 2012
March 15 2012
More March Sketches and a Double Sketchbook
Page 10.
These are from the same sketchbook as the last posting, but it is a twofold sketchbook: It is half made from very bright, almost blueish Dorée 200 drawing paper, whose color I love, which is a good paper for dry media, and I have a 50 m roll lying around under my desk which will last me forever (and only cost around 70 €). This paper also sucks beyond the telling of it for watercolor or even slight ink washes, and the brush pen doesn’t go on quite as smooth as I would like. So the other half of the book is made of my favourite drawing paper ever, the Fabriano Disegno F4, which is a tiny bit warmer in its color, also very smooth, and although it isn’t advertised for wet media at all, takes them surprisingly well. In fact, for most things I prefer it to ‘real’ watercolor paper even if working heavily with watercolor. It is also way more expensive than the Dorée, and I’m buying it in loose sheets these days because I can’t afford the big packs. Oh well. Anyway, I’m using this book starting from both sides (the page numbers with ‘b’ are from the Disegno side, the regular numbers from the Dorée side), and will meet myself in the middle somewhere. I still like the format. I can actually imagine sticking to this square size for a couple of years.
These landscape sketches are inspired by the wonderful drawings of Fred, by the way, like this one. So many possibilities lie in his treatment of wash and bleeding, so much still to learn for me! But some of it might have to wait for next winter, when the landscape gets empty again and the trees bare.
P.S. If you click on page 05b you’ll see some strange textures in the brown on the right side. That’s what happens when a wash freezes on the page. I love it, I just wish I could play around with that effect more without freezing myself. I’ve drawn this place many times before, and encountered the same problem last winter, as you can see here. And of course I forgot to buy a heating pad in time, and now spring is just around the corner and I don’t feel like I’ll use it often enough to buy one now. I think I should make a note in my calendar, maybe for October or so: “get a heating pad and fingerless gloves.”
March 06 2012
People on Public Transport in February
Sketch of people on public transport
P.S. This drawing is for sale here.
March 05 2012
The audience of Torsun and Kulla reading from 'Raven wegen Deutschland' at the King George in Cologne.
February 03 2012
Lots of People on Public Transport in January
I’ve been looking for a way to make my public transport drawings ‘exhibitable’, take them out o sketchbooks somehow, mostly by using folded single sheets of different sizes, like here. This is another attempt, not just putting the people on a single sheet, but trying to convey the feeling of looking through a whole sketchbook, while it still being a flat piece that I can hang on a wall and that could possibly be framed. It is 1,50 m long and about 24 cm high, and I really recommend that you click on it and look at the full resolution file, there is way more to see here than fits in a 620 px width!
I’m happy how this turned out, and I think it will have a good place hanging in a café. I hope somebody will look up sometime and get lost in my big little drawing, and then be surprised how late it already is…
January 04 2012
December 09 2011
Nocturnes
Classless@Eschloraque, gouache on prepared paper
I’ve been experimenting with ways to sketch in the dark, sketch in bars, clubs at parties etc. It is a very fundamental challenge – I only see big forms and cannot make out the specifics of facial features that I rely on in my subway sketches, plus I can usually not make out the tip of my pen or brush the way I can in daylight. In a way it is like drawing with glasses on, made of milk glass, or running with weights. I’m not actually satisfied with any of these attempts, but I think I might come to an interesting place if I manage to keep it up for a while. I find it hard to judge an experiment like this before I have tried it at least somewhere in the 40–80 sketches range, because it takes a lot of orienting and testing the ground to become comfortable enough to actually play with it and see how far it can go.
The only white I’ve found satisfying on the dark paper I prepared (because in the dark it is the lights that make out the forms more than the shadows) is a white Edding 751, but it dries very slowly and sticky and is just in general not a drawing tool that feels good to me. Not sure what to do about it, though.
Left & middle: Meridian Brothers @ Haus der Kulturen der Welt, white marker and white Derwent Drawing pencil on prepared paper, right: club night in gouache.
Spektrophon @ White Trash Fast Food, on the left in gouache, right in white marker.
When I went to meet the other Berlin urban sketchers to be recorded sketching for local TV I realized I had forgotten to take a sketchbook or paper (I don’t have a current sketchbook since I came home from Istanbul), so I used the backside of one of those as my impromptu leporello book.
Sketches during recordings made of urban sketchers Berlin for Berlin TV station RBB.
November 11 2011
Some finished Watercolors
These are all from earlier this year – I was in such a frenzy of final exams, the Open Air Gallery and last minute travel preparations (is there another kind?) that although I did find the time to make these drawings, I never got around to photographing (they are matted and mostly too big for my scanner) and blogging them. Until now:
Dead Tulip I
Dead Tulip II
Painted Nettle
Oberbaumbrücke detail
Holteistrasse Ecke Boxhagener
Gärtnerstrasse
Westhafen
Most of them are quite a bit brighter than they look here (they are on white, not grey paper)—there doesn’t seem to be a time of day in November in when my apartment is bright enough for photographing artwork, and artificial light and photoshop games never seem to turn out right. The drawings vary in size – the flower drawings are almost miniatures, with the window of the mat measuring just 6 x 16 cm, while the windows for ‘Oberbaumbrücke’ and ‘Westhafen’ measure 30 x 40 cm. All of them are now up in my etsy store (70–200 € per drawing):
http://www.etsy.com/shop/OonaL.
November 03 2011
Lisbon Sketches and Drawings
First Letter From Lisbon
First Day of the Symposium
Line over color workshop with Richard Câmara
Unfinished Business workshop with Nina Johansson and Jose Louro
Just drawing ...
... and drawing some more.
If you look closely you can see how I assembled the second letter from Lisbon from the sketches I had done the days before:
Second Letter from Lisbon
Some details:
Detail from the second letter
First sketch of the scene
Sketch of the scene with colors only
Sketch of the scene with lines only
P.S. Both letters are now available on etsy: The first letter here, and the second letter here.
October 16 2011
Traveling Things
I have arrived in Istanbul, the last station of my journey before I come back to Berlin, and it occurred to me to take stock of my stuff. Not a packing list, but an incomplete record of changes in my baggage:
Things lost
- 1 Jumper
- 4 Waterbrushes
- 1 Rotring Art Pen
- 1 Pentel Brushpen
- 2 Pentel Graphgear Propeller Pencils
- 1 Swim Suit
- 2 Hats
- 1 Umbrella
- 2 Squirrel Mop Brushes
- 1 Kajal
- Unknown number of Pencils
- 1 MP3 Player
Things broken/worn out
- 1 Folding Chair
- 1 T-Shirt
- 1 Pair of Trousers
- 1 Camera Case
- 1 Pair of Headphones (repairable, I think)
- 2 Jumpers
- 1 Utility belt
Things stolen
- 1 lightweight hammock
Things left behind
- 1 Camping Stool
- 1 Backpack that didn’t fit well
- 1 Eric Newby, A Short Walk to the Hindukush
Things I sent home
- 2 Full Sketchbooks
- 1 Towel (replaced by a tıny camping towel)
- 1 Leather Bag (replaced by Urban Sketchers Symposıum freeby bag, taking up much less space and much lighter)
- 1 “Turner in Venice”
- 1 Alain de Botton, “The Art of Travel”
- 1 Karl Marx, “Kapital 1.1″
- 1 Bill Bryson, forgot the title
- 1 Book with sketches and drawings by Charles Rennie Mcintosh
- 1 (wrecked) T-Shirt, only useful as padding for the books
- x empty sketchbooks and art supplies I decided I didn’t need after all
Gifts received
- The Bryson Book
- Freebies at the Symposium
- Some money
- Lots of food and some weeks’ worth of lodging
- Most of the transport between Scotland and Venice
Things bought
- 2 Squirrel mop brushes
- 2 Sketchbooks
- 2 Propellerpencils
- 1 Folding chair
- 1 Backpack
- 1 Camera case
- 1 Pairs of shorts
- 1 Top
- 1 Blouse
- 1 Dress
- 1 Belt
- 1 Scarf
- 3 Hats
- 1 Pair of shades
- >4 Books
- 2 Tubes of Acrylic paınt
- 2 Tubes of gouache
- 1 Fabriano Journal (sadly, as I noticed when it was too late, not one of the “Artists’” journals)
- 1 Lighter (to light a fire in a fireplace in Scotland)
- 1 Raincoat/jacket
- 4 Pads of watercolor paper
- 1 Umbrella
- x art supplies: nib pen, nibs, ink
- 4 waterbrushes
- Pigma Micron pens: 02, 035
- Copic Fineliner 01
To my surprise still with me are my trainers, worn literally every day since 19 July, and my phone, 8 years old and already partially broken when I started out.
September 02 2011
The Flux of Traveling so Far
Shortly after the Urban Sketchers Symposium was over, while I was still in Lisbon and haggling with a guy from Turkmenistan who had been supposed to send me the letter of introduction I would need to get the visa by July 26 but hadn’t, I realised that trying to organise the part of my travels that were supposed to go through Central Asia while already traveling was not such a great idea. It would mean worrying too much about money, visas, time and my passport in other people’s hands, and keep me from enjoying the journey before reaching Central Asia. So I cancelled. I did not actually get any money back, nor did that LOI ever reach me, and I still really want to go, but it has to wait for another year. Better planning, more time…
There have been several effects of this loosening of my itinerary. The first is that all the plans that I do make now seem to be even more fickle. They tend to change from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, and are very responsive to chance influences – things I overhear people say, postcards I see, things I read accidentally etc. This is a bit of a problem for organising accommodation, though, especially as Scotland turned out to be more expensive than I expected and I’ve been mostly hitchhiking and couchsurfing since.
The second is that sometimes I’m getting scared, like I’m in free fall and don’t know when and how I will hit bottom. There isn’t much to hang on to, no routine to speak of, I barely spend more than two nights in the same place. For as long as I can remember I’ve always had a plan, and for years a cherished daily routine. Now I’ve taken that away, and sometimes the lack of plan and routine makes me panic.
On bad days I feel like I can hear my money steadily burning in the background, and my lack of income and absence of a job lined up when I come home add a very real dimension to that feeling of free fall. On those bad days I can’t understand how on earth I came up with this stupid travel idea instead of spending this precious time before my savings run out at home job hunting. Naturally, on bad days traveling doesn’t even appear to be very enjoyable, and therefore not worth it at all. On one such day I redecorated my cotton bag from the Symposium.
Strangely enough, I never panic while drawing.
But those are not most days. Most days are free floating in a good way, too busy looking and drawing for panic. And then sometimes I get a message that somebody has purchased one of the Postcards from Far Away, giving me hope that I’ll actually have enough money to buy frames for the exhibition I’m going to participate in when I come back…
The Lake District fell by the wayside – the Hebrides just looked too good from Glasgow, and Wales too good from the Hebrides. I’ve started forgetting what day of the week it is, and sometimes what month of the year.
Places where I’ve spent at least one night so far:
- Lisbon
- Glasgow
- Oban
- Castlebay
- Daliburgh
- Flodigarry
- Portree
- Glencoe
- Liverpool
- Aberystwyth
- Llanderfel
- Dolgellau
- Llanmorlais
- London
Here is a rough map of those in Britain.
In the meantime I have reduced my stuff to one hand-luggage sized bag-pack, learned the meaning of a couple of new words (crofting, fuel poverty, dehumidifier), seen a beautiful painting by William Turner I didn’t know before in Liverpool, and saw a double rainbow over London.
Tomorrow I’m off to Paris!
June 19 2011
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