Stockholm Skeppsbrokajen

While in Sweden I took the chance to pop up to Luleå, the town that I grew up in, this last weekend. It's been about 3 years since I last saw my friends up there so it was great to catch up. Two unexpected encounters with old classmates and a summer storm (love the summer storms up north!) were some of the highlights of the trip.


On the way back for my last few weeks in Visby I had a few hours to spare in Stockholm so I took a walk from the train station down the main shopping street Drottningatan, past the house of parliament and through Old Town down to the water (a very popular tourist streak). These sketches were drawn on the pier at the edge of Old Town where you can get a ferry that takes you on a sightseeing tour along the shores of Stockholm. (Why do I feel like I'm writing a tourism advert?)

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Visby Medieval Week

Around this time every year, the town of Visby gets invaded by all manners of people dressed in medieval clothing. Some are natives but many come from all over the country as well as from abroad. It's a sign that the annual Medieval festival is about to start!
We're in the middle of medieval week right now and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't enjoying every moment of it. Unfortunately I haven't been able to see as much as I would've liked to but it's pretty much impossible to escape the medieval people.
The other night I was walking home along the old city wall which passes the medieval market. A big group of medieval people were playing flutes and drums around a campfire - all this under a gorgeous full moon. I felt whisked away to another world.
A colleague at work told me she moved back to Visby after spending some years on the mainland (Visby is on the island of Gotland) because there's just something magical about this town. I can believe it.

These are some sketches from a performance of the Swiss musical group Koenix. They play "loud and impulsive medieval music on bagpipes and drums", perfect for the theme of the festival. I really enjoyed their performance and it was fun to try and to capture their movements.

The first sketches were done with Stablio coloured pencils and the last ones with an Akayashi Sai watercolour bush pen in burnt umber. I only bought one of these brush pens to try it out. It feels great but I've only used it as an ink brush. It would be fun to try it with water as well.

P.S. If you ever want to visit Visby during Medieval week (or most other times during the summer for that matter), be sure to book accommodation early! This event is extremely popular and finding housing can be difficult.

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Visby Medieval Week - link
Koenix - link
Akayashi Sai watercolour brush pens - Jetpens

Bee head

A sketch where I tried to make use of some of the things we've done in life drawing class.

Visby - Summer evening sketch

This is the view I see from the back of a computing lab at HGO at this very moment. It's a beautiful, warm summer evening and it would seem that a family is having a garden party. What an idyllic picture of Swedish summer at it's best!

HGO Life drawing: Day 1

I've finally scanned in some life drawing sketches from the first week of class at the University of Gotland (HGO). We're already 6 weeks in now but somehow I feel that those first intense days were some of the most rewarding ones. That week we were burning through paper at a furious rate. It was exhausting but fun as well. Pernilla would go around looking at people's work one at the time and angle her advise to each person's level.
There was a lot to go through in those first 3 ½ days since we had get along on our own for the subsequent 3 weeks . I was a bit disappointed when I realised how little actual model & teaching time we had in the course. Pernilla commutes to Gotland for a few days once every few weeks. In between we have a model for one afternoon each week and a weekly assignment to send to Pernilla.
In a way it probably could have been expected since HGO is not an art school. Many of the people attending the class are either current Game Development of Industrial Design students at HGO and they get models through another local art school. Still, I would have loved to have a few intense days like those first ones every week. I think the effects would be quite noticeable.

I've compiled som drawings from the first day. Comparing with more recent drawings, these seem more lively and spontaneous... but also a lot messier. It might be because we were focusing on movement and gesture at the very beginning. A lot of people were pretty much beginners at life drawing so it was important to establish some proceedure. In later weeks we started looking more at form and we got a (*cough* stiffer *cough*) male model, so the drawings lost some of the spark in my opinion.


Some notes from the first day:

• Start by getting the overall rythm/direction of the body. S-curves or C-curves (if bent over) are often great for this.
  
• Use curved lines to get the movement and the gesture, but avoid symmetry. Let the lines flow into each other through the body while pushing from one extreme to the other.

• The direction/angle of the shoulders is not necessarily the same as the torso. The shoulders can move somewhat independently.
  
• The nipples, on the other hand, are good markers for determining the angle of the ribcage.
• The S-curved is used all the time to describe organic shapes, get used to it!
• The "body bean" is a good shorthand for describing stretch, compression and twist.
• Use the neck/head line as a marker when drawing the head from the back. It indicates the tilt and direction of the head which can often be hard to see from the back.

As a final note, this type of life drawing is most famously taught by Glenn Vilppu who has a great video series to complement his Vilppu Drawing Manual. It's a form of life drawing that lends itself well to animeation, and comics for that matter, since you learn to construct the body without a model.

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University of Gotland (HGO) - link
Life Drawing at HGO - link
Pernilla Persson - link
Glenn Vlippu - link