Off again...

Have a wonderful summer (break)!

Back again soon...

Stockholm i mitt hjärta, Part 3 - Djurgården & Skansen

Welcome back to lovely Stockholm! It's been a while since my last post in this series, but today, we're going to spend a lovely late summer's day on the island of Djurgården, visiting the outdoor museum Skansen, and enjoying a nice cup of coffe and a slice of cake. The best way to get to Djurgården is to walk along Strandvägen and across Djurgårdsbron. There are some great museums, the impressive Nordiska Museet, the fascinating Vasamuseet, and the charming Junibacken. But it's such a nice and sunny day, that it is best to spend it outdoors.

There's so much to see at Skansen, the outdoor museum, that we head there straight away. We're taking the the main entrance, which means you can take the escalator up (you could of course walk, if you wanted), and then wander around the little village with all its different and craft workshops for a bit. Then why not take a cup of coffee in the shade before setting off to explore the rest of the place.

Skansen is full of historical buildings and sites from all over Sweden, it's a walk through time and space.

I think it's time for a refreshing ice cream now, after all the walking...

And off we go again, to visit some of the animals in the zoo. Of course there has to be reindeers and mooses, they're so typical of Sweden, aren't they. The reindeers don't seem to enjoy this hot late summer's day very much, they are all lying on the ground panting. And the moose seems to prefer to lie in the most muddy patch - I guess it's the coolest place there.

We enjoy the views over the city one more time, before leaving Skansen to go for a little stroll to some other parts on Djurgården.

Walking northwards along the water to Waldemarsudde, where we spend the rest of the afternoon in the café, enjoying the sun, a nice cup of coffe - and a delicious blåbärspaj med vispgrädde. No wonder, the little bird is eyeing the cake enviously, it really is most yummy!

There's a lot more to see and do, you can spend all day on the island, walking around and visiting galleries and other places of interest. But we'll leave Djurården for now, after all, there's so much more to visit and explore in Stockholm. I hope you enjoyed our little tour, and will join me again in the next part of this series, which hopefully will be up soon.

A citron green & turquoise flower garden

It's the first week of Summer of Colour, and the colour combination that got the most votes was citron green & turquoise. And as usual, with challenges, my mind immediately went totally blank when I started thinking about what to paint with these colours. I saw postings popping up everywhere, in the Facebook group, on blogs, thinking, 'ah yes, that's a good idea', and 'this techniques works well'. Blank. Then I saw Tracey's gorgeous bag (I want one!!), and thought, well that's an idea. Look around the flat for something in those colours, and just draw it. Blank.

So at the end, I decided to keep it simple. I did this flower doodle page in my little sketchbook on the train to and from work, and decided, to just paint the flowers turquoise and the background green. 

I quite liked it, so I decided to do another one, this time using proper watercolour paper and watercolours. I splashed some green and turquoise on the paper for a background, and then started doodling on top of it. It's not the most ingenious idea, but I'm in a kind of doodling mood this week, and it makes me happy, and that's good enough for me, really.

And of course, when I had finished my two little sketches, I saw all those turquoise and citon green things everywhere around me. That necklace, which I haven't worn for ages, and somehow just felt like wearing again today ( - just look at its shape!). 

My current favourite mug which I bought on my holiday in the south of England last month.

And my new notebook that I got earlier this week, and which is going to be my little "blog book", to help me get more organised with my blog, and better keep up with blogging. And the new matching pens, and the different washi tapes I already had. And my other favourite mug. Isn't it just typical!

Linking up to Summer of Colour and Paint Party Friday.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! Can't wait what next week's colour combination will be. I might just keep going on with my water colour splashes and doodling, to save my sanity :)

Some more Train and Lunch Sketches: Fruits and Flowers

I did these sketches a few weeks ago, but somehow never got round to post them here. Actually, I've been very bad at blogging in general recently. Either I haven't got time to edit the photos, or the light is too bad for taking photos and I just can't get it right, or I just simply never get round to write up a post. 

But hopefully, this will all change from next month on. Because next month, I'll start a new job, and with the new job comes a much shorter daily commute (from up to two hours to under an hour one way), and a whole day off a week, which all means: much more time and energy to put into my art. And my blog.

It will also mean the end of my little TrainSketches. Although I hope to keep up the occasional lunch sketches. There's a lovely park sourrounding my new place of work, which I think would be nice for some fresh air and sketching. At least during summer. But we'll see.

So, here are a few of my latest train and lunch sketches. Some delicious kiwis, sketched in my lunchtime...

... some paisley and flower doodles, sketched during a couple of morning train rides, ...

... and the lovely lilies of the valley along the the main road on my way to work (I so will not miss having to walk or cycle from the station to the library in wind and weather, after having already spent 1 1/2 hours in various trains), sketched again in one of my lunch breaks.

And another thing on my to-do list for when I'll have more time is to finally give my blog its long overdue makeover. Can't wait to see it all fresh and new. It'll be a right energy boost, I'm sure.

Summer of Colour

Summer is very reluctant to make its appearance this year, and spring, well spring has been more like February all the way through. It's been cold, grey and wet for the past weeks, but this week, it looks like we're finally getting some warmer und brigher weather. And with it, more colour. I've come across Summer of Colour last year, when many of my blogger friends posted beautiful artwork in the brightest (ice cream) colours for several weeks during summer. It looked intriguing, but I had missed the start, and didn't want to jump in somewhere in the middle. But this year, I'm going to join in.

This year, the colours are chosen by the participant in a vote, the winner then being announced the following Monday.So this being the first week, we have to vote for the first colour combination to work with next week. There are twelve different combinations, and they all sound very intriguing. I must admit, I haven't quite made up my mind yet, but the decision will probably be one of two choices.

I'm really looking forward to start working with the first colour combination next Monday. Challenges are a great way to stretch your artistic mind, and do something you normally wouldn't do. Although, to be honest, I also very often find them quite stressfull. My mind just seems to go completely empty, and I can't think of anything at all, until when the given time is over, when my mind just overflows with ideas, and I could complete at least 10 different pieces for the prompt. But I hope that with colour, it might be easier. And hopefully, this will be a challenge that I'll actually complete. Even though I'll be away for 2 1/2 weeks.

And to get into the right colourful mood, here are some pictures I've just come across when going through some old photos on my computer, from my trip to Vienna two years ago.

A cup of coffee in the beautiful café of the Hunderwasser Museum KunstHausWien, where the morning May sun is playing with the coloured glass table tops, turning the whole courtyard into a peaceful fairy tale scene...

The famous Hundertwasserhaus, designed by the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hunderwasser (1928 - 2000)...

The myriad of colours and patterns in the interior of the Stefansdom, painted  by the sun shining through the stained glass window...

Travel Journal

I've been wanting to make travel sketches for ages, and I've been filling my suitcase with all kinds of journals, sketchbooks and paint mediums on all my trips in the past two or three years. But it wasn't until my holiday a couple of weeks ago, that I finally started my first proper travel journal, documenting each day of my stay in lovely Dorset. (Well almost, I didn't bother to make a page for the shopping day in Exeter, when it was pouring down with rain all day long). Of course, I'm still dreaming of the ultimate travel sketch experience - placing myself on a cliff top, beach, in a busy town square, or café, my supplies spread around me, and sketching and painting right there. and then But that's rather unlikely. I like my holiday days to be filled, to be on the move, go places, see things, as many as possible. And my camera alone is usually already more than enough weight to carry around all day. And I'm also far to shy to sketch and paint in public.

So instead I'm relying on reference images. This also means a different, or rather extended, approach to my photography. Apart from the carefully composed photos I usually take, I now have to remember to also take photos that will serve mainly or only as reference for the scenes and objects I want to paint later. Most of them are rather boring photos, but that's okay, as they serve their purpose.

I took a travel watercolour box on my holiday too, but I never got round to do any painting. Instead, I just made simple pencil/pen sketches in the evenings, documenting different bits and pieces of a particular day, a double page for each day. Back home, I'm now adding colour to each page. It's so much easier to be able to look at the photo on my computer, rather than on the camera display, and by taking the time to paint the pages now, to do some research for the notes to add to the sketches, feels like going on all the walks, seeing all the sights again.

I decided to use a Molesking A4 watercolour journal. The pages are big enough for lots of details, and the landscape format, which I didn't like at all at first (but it seems almost impossible to find watercolour sketchbooks in a normal format) turns out to be quite useful for this kind of sketches. The paper could be a bit smoother for my liking, but it's a nice crispy white, and paper thick enough to flatten out after the paint has dried, which makes sketching so much easier.

So far, I've only finished painting the first page, but I hope to spend most of the weekends working on the other sketches, and to finish them all before I head off on my next holiday soon. Of course my travel journal will be in my suitcase too.

Linking up to the wonderful Paint Party Friday. Make sure to go and have a look at all the wonderful work of the other party goers. It's always so inspiring.

Sunday Walk

I finally managed to force myself to go for a Sunday walk today. It's not that I don't like walking. On the contrary, I love going for walks, especially in the woods (and of course on the beach, but that's not much of an option here). But I just usually end up having too many other things to do instead. Or rather, making different priorities. In order to help me get back into a Sunday walk habit, I made a list of benefits, to give it some purpose, such as looking for inspiration for sketches and paintings, and capture beauty in the ordinary with my camera. I've been neglecting my DSLR camera far too much since I got my iPhone, usually using it mostly for holiday pictures. So today, I decided to use my little 50mm lens instead of my everyday 17-70mm zoom lens, in order to get a different perspective. 

With it's option of an aperture of f/1.8, the 50mm lens allows you  to capture a terrific depth of field, and, according to light, some fabulous bokeh.

I walked along some beautiful flowering meadows. Who would have thought that common little wild flowers can be so fascinating?

And trought the woods. Unlike the woods in England, where many of them are filled with carpets of bluebells at the moment, the woods here are rather bare of flowers, and instead present mainly a lush green.

The weather kept changing from minute to minute, but except a very short little shower, the weather stayed dry, and there was even sunshine as well! It was rather windy, though, which made focusing rather challenging at times.

Some of the rhododendrons (or azaleas, I never really quite know what the difference between them is) in some front gardens where in full bloom and just totally amazing.

And I even found some bluebells in a grassy patch outside a block of flats.

To capture this little fellow, my allround zoom lens, which has quite a good macro function as well, would of course have been perfect. But then that's the challenge; to work with what you've got, and make the best of it. I think he turned out rather well.

What I love about photography is how it allows you to chose how you look at things. Some of the pictures were taken at places that were not exactly the most picturesque. The gras strips between the pavement and the main road, road, on traffic islands etc. But even in those places, beauty can be found, if you care to look for it. And your camera allows you to focus on just that beauty, and to block out there rest. It allows you to capture and elevate the ordinary, to decide for yourself how you want to look at things, what perspective to choose, and on what to put your focus on.

I really enjoyed my little walk, and 'll definitely try to go for a little Sunday walk again next weekend, and make it a regular habit. But I'll better try not to take 220+ photos again - or I'll end up spending all day with downloading and editing them, and won't have any thime for painting, or anything else, at all.