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.

Ewelina In Islington

Ewelina in Islington. The first drawing from our sessions. Black and White. Pencil on Watercolour paper. The Kings Head in Islington. June 4th, 2008.

I'm going to Sweden tomorrow.

Five Sketches of One Nude

Five Sketches of One Nude. From the Long Dark sketchbook, sometime in January or February 2007. I like the way all five drawings exist on parallel planes within the same page.

Ewelina Has Many Faces

Ewelina Has Many Faces. September 27. 2008. We were going through my briefcase.


Ewelina was wondering why I carry so many sunglasses. So I explained how each pair carries a different personality. Which is when our conversation began to focus on image and projecting a certain character.
Which is when Ewelina admitted to having many faces.
Recently I've been fascinated with putting portraits and drawings together with thoughts... When I make this into a painting, I'm going to paint both panels and show them together. The portrait. and the context of our thoughts.

Sorph and Bobby at the Sunrise Festival

Sorph and Bobby at the Sunrise Festival. From the Sunshine sketchbook, June 2007.

Katerina and the Church

Katerina and the Church. A different day in Hampstead, we kept our feet in one of the ponds.

Walking back, we found a church. And some steps.

And a blue door. Blue is often my favorite colour.

This summer my favorite colour was yellow. You can see my new adventure pack on the steps.
We found it too distracting with people walking by. So, no drawings that day. But, here is a drawing from earlier in July.

Black Lamp on the Southbank of the Thames

Black Lamp on the South bank of the Thames. Today was beautiful. Sunday, 21st September. 2008.
Blue skies and happy people walking along the river Thames.
I've decided to focus on some of the non-ubiquitous iconic Londonesque imagery...
... like this black lamp from the South bank of the Thames river. There are the most amazing fish at the bottom of each lamp.

Incidentally, this is what I was watching just before I decided to draw...

Katerina in the Park

Katerina in the Park. Hampstead. July, 2008. A sunny day. We had an orange blanket which we used to push down the wildlife long enough to make some drawings.

Circles are my favourite shapes.

Notice the use of symbols to approximate form. This is my favourite drawing with Katerina.

Katerina with Sunglasses

Katerina with Sunglasses. You may recognize these sunglasses. Here, they're sitting in my briefcase.

Here, they're being worn by Katerina in July, 2008.

A Wooden Block

A Wooden Block. A blank canvas. An ideal starting place for my Kindergarten series.


Think alphabet blocks.

Call it a reality-based alphabet block.

Telling a story with no words...

The Gas Station Table
Bench Beneath a Tree
The Beach and the Sea
Rain on the Roof
101 Blues
The Gnarly Tree

The Gas Station Table

The Gas Station Table. Nothing better than a 24-hour gas station with an outdoor patio. And coffee.

Rain on the Roof

Rain on the Roof. Interstate 95 Southbound to Petersburg. August 2008. I like watching the droplets of rain move like organisms up the glass.

A random street in London. You can tell it's raining because I'm holding an umbrella. September 2008.

Just a few minutes later and I'm still walking in the rain. But you can't tell because the droplets were almost not big enough to be considered particles so I thought that I was sliding through a continuous mist.

Back to the Fan, Richmond, Virginia. August 2008 again. Vertical lines left trails in the night before landing light and liquid in my eyes. Then, there were puddles. And the droplets were discrete entities and I wanted to catch them all.

Two Bottles (Red and Yellow)

Two Bottles (Red and Yellow). One advantage of giving drawing lessons: You can steal from your students. In this case, I took a drawing (not mine) of two bottles and fast-forwarded several iterations toward a more refined sense of ideal form.

Two Chairs in Camden

Two Chairs in Camden.

January, 2008. Warm by the fire at The World's End. Pen on Paper. A drawing of two chairs. From the Warm Blanket sketchbook.

Gabriela

Gabriela.

Watercolour and pencil on paper. June, 2008. Hendon.

After sharpening all of my pencils, we tried three diferent poses. This last pose included lots of circles, implied shapes, and pillows. At the time (two and a half weeks ago), we had decided that this watercoulour of Gabriela on the couch with some pillows would be the painting pose. Of course, that decision never came true and was overridden by the future.

A Shed and the Back of a House

A Shed and the Back of a House. I don't often paint an undercoat of yellow. In fact, I painted this undercoat ages ago. About a month, actually. That's when I started on this drawing of a shed and the back of my neighbor's house.

Here, you can see the actual back of a house, the house that was the subject of this pencil drawing, the house that is currently the subject of an as-yet-unfinished oil painting.

The problem: Paintings started on a sunny day don't tend to get finished. There's just too much competition.

Leave a comment.
paintings.drawings.arithmetic.

Pencils are People Too.

Pencils are People Too. I did not, in fact, neurotically sharpen seven pencils in a quick succession. I did however sharpen seven pencils in a quick succession. To prepare for some preparatory drawings of Gabriela, I had to explain the benefits of a full range of ready-access graphite.

She listened intently. Then said, "I didn't know that."

Leave a comment.

paintings.drawings.arithmetic.