Drawing diary: June

In the early spring, my brother gave me his set of professional markers that he didn't use anymore. I had told him I had started drawing again and he was curious to see what I'd do with them. Frankly, I was, too. I had not used markers since I was a child and back then I hated the ugly lines they created when colouring something in. But these were professional markers, and I've seen a lot of fan artists do cool things with them.

For marker users this probably sounds stupid, but I just didn't know where to start! I'm so used to sketching things with pencil. So I went to "marker camp" (this is like boot camp, but in an Scandinavian forest, and you're only allowed to draw with markers for fun). The less cool-sounding version is: I went on holiday to Sweden and Denmark with family. So this will be a report kind of thing with drawings and pictures, and naturally I'll be fangirling about Sweden as well, because that's what I do.

Anyway, the boot camp result was way better than I'd dared to hope, so I can't wait to hear what you think!

It's a long drive to Sweden from the Netherlands. Luckily I managed to procure a seat at the front so I could draw! Which turned out to be kind of tough in a car (grrr, shaky lines). I decided to only use three colours for this one. As a result the scene looks a bit more depressing than in reality, but the colours do look balanced.

And then we were there: Sweden, the country of the cute little red houses. These were our neighbour's.

Unfortunately, my nerves hurt a lot after spending a day in a trembling car, so I couldn't really go anywhere the first day of our holiday. I didn't mind so much, though, because the view from our rented cottage was this:

Turns out the backyard of our cottage was a nature reserve! When I woke up and went outside, eleven birds of prey circled above the house, then started to disperse over the valley. I also saw a pair of ravens. This place was so cool.

I spent the whole day sitting in the sun drawing the view. It was so relaxing. The result is a bit cartoony, but I'm really happy with it.

The next day I felt much better and took a walk with Conrad and my brother. I drew the left picture during our break. I had only 15 minutes to do it, because the others were eager to continue. I didn't like the result, so I drew it again later back home, this time with thinner lines and from a slightly different perspective (picture to the right). Somehow I was really struggling with the lines for these drawings, while it came naturally for the landscapes. I don't know why. Argh.

In this part of Sweden most of the woods are mixed. I really loved this birch forest, it's so pretty! I didn't get around to drawing one, but I'm definitely planning to rectify that error in the future.

In total we walked five kilometers, which is huge for me. I haven't walked such a distance since I became ill in 2013, so it felt so good. Of course I was super tired afterwards, but screw that.

This walking stick that my brother found in the woods and cut me probably helped a ton with making those kilometers. 

The Swedish text with flowers surrounding it was drawn by me after a painting that hung in our cottage. It reads:

Good thoughts and good words

Spread happiness on our world

It's super cheesy, but I loved it because it was just the kind of thing you would expect in an old cottage such as ours.

This was said cottage. Including stealth poodle who is calculating the best way to get to those pancakes with wild elderflowers. We ate that a lot, because it's just so good (and no, the poodle didn't get any).

I would have stayed here for the whole holiday, but unfortunately we only had rented for half a week and had planned to go to Denmark afterwards. So back in the car it was.

I drew the left side mirror of the car on our way. I did a lot of shading with small fineliner strokes and it has a different style because of it. It was just something that happened, but I kind of like it. Another thing I learned was that I suck at drawing cars, but I had a solution for that, as you'll see later in the post.

There's also a drawing of a relaxing stealth poodle.

And finally, the bottle to the is of a Danish local brew. I liked it so much that I persuaded the others to go looking for the brewery on the Danish countryside. Turns out it was even made in a castle!

Unfortunately it was morning and it was still closed. /mood_sad

The surroundings of our Denmark cottage wasn't as pretty as in Sweden, but we had fun hunting for archaeological monuments in the neighbourhood, especially ring fortresses (which I wrote about in my bachelor's thesis). 

I don't really like what I drew in Denmark, though. The sunset was particularly hard: the blue and yellow are almost complementary colours and I think that's what's hurting my eyes. Unfortunately, they were also the colours that represented reality best. I don't know, sometimes I just give up.

The floating islands were really floating, though! Well, not really, but it looked like they were because of the reflection of the sky onto the water.

On the way home, I decided to redeem myself regarding the failed Danish car by drawing any car that would drive in front of us for a while. I allowed myself to relax by using pencils just this once. I had bought a white pencil in Denmark to try out making white highlights and I really like the result. At least after I found out you absolutely can't mix the white with the normal pencils. It really gives the cars extra depth when applied well (you'll see this more clearly if you click on the image to enlarge it).

Oh, and at the top left corner you see my brother playing Pokémon Ruby on the Gameboy Advanced. Hah, got a ninja Pokémon reference in after all!