A Curve in the Norrkoping Library

A Curve in the Norrkoping Library. Libraries are warm and free. The library in Norrkoping not only had books and windows for walls, but also a stone statue carving of a curve.

Which is nice.

This library also had an indoor water fountain. I can only presume that placing a statue of a curve next to the water was an attempt to evoke a three-dimensional manifestation of a ripple.... We'll say, "A Ripple as it Emerges in Time". But, maybe not. I can't read Swedish... Actually, that's what's so nice about curves... they can be used to model lots of things...

Notice the English Bookshop bookmark?

A Museum Visit - Moderna Museet in Stockholm

A Museum Visit. Moderna Museet in Stockholm. The Four Elements by Alexander Calder.
Calder distills form and movement into essential symbols like few other people. I'm surprised he's so often associated with the Surrealists...

I'm also surprised at the artificially driven kinetic motion of each element. I had no idea....

The English Bookshop Guestbook

The English Bookshop Guestbook. We were wandering around Stockholm, looking for a warm place to have an adventure. Enter the English Bookshop in old town Stockholm.

"Yes! Julie, they have a guestbook... Grab a book to read..."
-Which book?
"Any book... You only have to pretend to read it anyway..."

Little did either of us know that she would pick the Horrible History of the World. Which is my least favourite type of book. Hers too...

-Do I have to keep reading this? I hate it.
"Yes! You picked it... Just pretend that you like it."

Sometimes I have a demanding personality. But fifteen minutes is not so long, is it?
The English Bookshop. Old town Stockholm, about 8pm. Fifteen minutes later, we were warm. Time for Julie to sign the guestbook too...
...so she signed the guestbook in the guestbook... get it?

Old Town Stockholm, Drawing in the Street

Old Town Stockholm, Drawing in the Street. Cold. I was hanging out with Julie in Old Town. We had been walking for hours, so I begged to take a break and make a drawing of some buildings in a particularly picturesque old town plaza. Which meant sitting on the street. Which was cold. Ice cold.

My use of the word picturesque is a bit of a play on words.... only later did I realize that every painting, photography, and postcard shop in Stockholm has their own version of exactly the same buildings. It is impossible that I had not seen those pictures earlier in the day... We were scavenging through shops looking for the perfect viking t-shirt.

Which begs the question: Was I compelled to draw these buildings because they had an original glow? Or, was the glow a consequence of my seeing all the other pictures of the same four colorful buildings in old town Stockholm?

Julie with Blue Scarf

Julie with Blue Scarf. Sweden. October, 2008. A watercolour sketch. A pencil drawing. And nice wallpaper.

Waiting in Heathrow Airport

Waiting in Heathrow Airport. I was waiting in Heathrow Airport, waiting for a trans-Atlantic flight from London to New York. December, 2007. One of my last drawings from 2007, in fact.

From the Warm Blanket sketchbook.