meldrum artIt was World SketchCrawl Day today and I met up with Nina Johansson to sketch at The City Museum (Stadsmuseet). The watercolour below was sketched from a third-floor window overlooking “Slussen” in Central Stockholm. It was a beautiful autumn day but too cold for us to be outside sketching.
 |
| Slussen 2013.10.19 |
My father passed away on the 29th September, it was a sad moment and I joined my family in grief. I am only now starting to find some form of normality, returning to a sense of balance which allows me to focus on positive moments like my art once again. Here are a few life drawings I did a few weeks back, I enjoyed having only six pastels and a charcoal pen to work with.
 |
 |
Another enjoyable session at Konstnärshuset here in Stockholm. One colleague asked if I would paint one more watercolour wash after getting home. The sketches would look more complete but then again I probably would loose the freshness. I chose to leave them alone.
 |
| 10 minute nude |
 |
| 5 minute nude |
 |
| 5 minute nude |
 |
| 5 minute nude |
 |
| 5 minute nude |
 |
| 2 minute nude |
 |
| 2 minute nude |
I paint these Naked Hands at lunch time, I take my time and invariably I overwork them, I get scared, I have too much time to think, I dab the brush 100 times too many. Life drawing is different, there I have only five or ten minutes to execute the watercolour, the result is a painting that contains life and energy. I am learning, in the mean time; here is a muddy, overworked Naked Hand.
 |
| Naked Hand 20130910. 9 x 14 cm Moleskin. |
I was very excited about attending my first life drawing evening after the summer break. It was a two hour pose at, “The Swedish Academy of Realist Art“. I was a bit too eager and so my watercolour study failed, luckily I didn’t give up and managed to do one half-decent sketch. The model’s underarm does not look correct but otherwise I’m quite pleased with it.
 |
| figure drawing 20130905 |
I used Arches 300gsm rough paper originally which is wonderful to paint on if you have time but is too slow-drying for figure painting with tempo. I don’t think my fellow artists would appreciate me using a hair drier every ten minutes either.
It sounds like one of those bad newspaper headlines. As for the watercolour which took me two lunch breaks, – it’s all right, I learned a few things which is the point of drawing and painting these in the first place. I’m happy enough with the result, a mixture of success and failure.
Life Drawing starts again tomorrow, I’m really looking forward to starting, it feels like it was a very long time ago since the last session.
 |
| Naked hand holds stopwatch! 9 x 14 cm Moleskin. |
Lunch sketch painted in my mini-watercolour Moleskin.
I had big plans to do a whole bunch of watercolours on my sailing trip. In reality it was almost impossible to concentrate for any length of time in the 35-36 degrees of heat. Still, I had a wonderful holiday and my batteries are charged. The sketches are A5 in size approximately.
 |
| Reversed perspective. ( It felt right at the time! ) |
