Park Sketch 8/9 - 2010

Above is a watercolor sketch I did yesterday, in a nearby park.
Autumn is definitely coming on, but we've had some good weather lately so I thought I'd try and make the best of it. The original is about 4"x6", and took me approximately 45 minutes.

Bibliotekshaven

We had some great weather here in Copenhagen yesterday, so I went out to see if I couldn't find something to sketch. I found the park adjacent to the old library building!

I started out with a larger pencil sketch (which I'm planning to save til later, maybe go back and try an acrylic version), and then did a ~40 minute watercolor sketch. Controlling the values with watercolor has been quite a challenge, I find myself moving to quick and carelessly - botching the entire thing.

August Update!

The summer is coming to and end, and here's some collected works from the past two months.
Most of these are from my vacation to Lofoten, Norway. A painter's paradise, no doubt about it!

Bö, Vesterålen, 21x13 cm. Acrylic on paper.
Painted in ~2 hours on location.

Kabelvåg, Lofoten, looking northeast from the pier, 21x14 cm. Acrylic on paper.
Painted in ~2 hours on location.

Kleppelv, Vesterålen, 13x7 cm. Watercolor sketch on paper.

Kvalvika, Lofoten, 15x12,5 cm. Watercolor sketch on paper.
An hours hike over a ridge from the road leads you down to this beach, surrounded by cliffs - fantastic!

Houseboat on the Dalälven river, Mora. 17x12,5 cm Watercolor sketch on paper.

Bonus image of my painting setup! My palette had been removed (I used the following colours for the acrylic paintings: cadmium yellow, ultramarine blue, cadmium red, burnt sienna, raw umber and titanium white) , but I had it laying down flat below the painting, on top of the paper. The box is a modified, lightweight paintbox that you get when buying those startup-painting-kits. There's a tripod mount that I've attached to the bottom of the box, and I'm painting in an A4 Watercolor Moleskine - works very well for acrylics too, it turns out!

Alright, I'm back from hibernation!

Below are my results of me and Björns session in Voss during the Easter holidays.
Great fun as always, and the weather was great!

I split my time during the session between these two small 9x13cm sketches:

In other news, spring has arrived in Copenhagen, and the sun is shining!

I'm trying to stir up some interest at the VFX-house I'm currently working at, so hopefully I'll be able to get a small Copenhagen sketch-group going on a regular after-work basis.

More sketches to come, now that I can safely sketch without freezing my fingers off.

Imaginary Sketchies

Since this isn't exclusively a plein-air blog, but also imaginary watercolor sketching I thought I'd slap some train-sketches, done while traveling between Voss, Norway.

I've always felt that my imaginary stuff is leaps and bounds better than real-life studies, I hope I'll be able to change this in the coming summer, joel have promised to go with me. Let's see if he's true to his words ;)

Voss 2010

This is starting to be a very nice tradition, meeting in Voss with Micke and doing plein-air!

I feel the composition is lacking, technically it's a leap forward.

Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

Winter is coming, so I packed my fingerless gloves and gurney-journey's old "alcohol-in-the-water" method and started doing winter landscapes..

I was thinking Howard Pyles on the last one, which I think turned out the best.