Last spread

I had a visit from a friend this weekend, and this quick brush pen sketch of her looking through my daughter's watercolours became the last spread in my second Sketchbook Diary.



You can see a slideshow with scans of the whole book here.

The next sketchbook is already bought and waiting for me to break it in. A link will be going up in the sidebar as soon as the first page is done and scanned.

Office view

I moved office this month, and the view from my new place is great. It looks down on the square facing Århus Central Station, and the place is always buzzing with life and traffic. Yesterday during lunch break I took the time to do a sketch looking out the window:





Ink pen and a touch of red coloured pencil. I will definitely be sketching this view again, it is very inspiring.

Hanging out

Living room loafers.



Sanguine pen and brush tipped marker in large (now medium?) Moleskine sketchbook. Only two more spreads left in this book, then I'm getting a new one - this one has been around for 1½ years.

Waiting for the figure skaters

Olympic Winter Games in Canada is a bit troublesome time-wise. For inscrutable reasons Danish television is almost exclusively transmitting directly from the games, which means that all the figure skating has been on between 2 and 4 AM - pretty tough for someone who wants to watch, but also has a life!



The girls and I have made valiant efforts to watch just a few hours of the competitions. This is a sketchbook journal entry made to pass the time until the skaters came on - ink pen and watercolour wash, brush pen markers and coloured pencil.

Sketch-date

I haven't been doing much sketching since I got back from my trip to England, but yesterday I'd made a sketching-date with a friend, a great way to ensure some quality sketch-time. We met up at her house for tea and talk, then brought out the sketching materials.




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large detail view of left page and large detail view of right

After a nice dinner of oven baked roots and salmon we continued sketching, and I took advantage of her two cats being around.





 



Unfortunately I didn't get any good shots of Anette's sketches, but perhaps she will share them herself later. All in all a very enjoyable and productive evening.

Café sketching

Dairyfree

Since I live in a household with 3 members who suffer from cows milk intolerance I'm always on the lookout for new dairyfree products.









Pens and markers in large Moleskine sketchbook.

Office view

This is the view from my new office in central Århus:



I can't wait to sketch this scene!

Train rides

It's always interesting to see what public transport is like in other countries. I'd heard that trains in England were quite expensive, and I've also heard quite a few complaints about the standard of the trains and the service. Since I planned on visiting family around Bath, I'd bought cheap(er) tickets online from home. This meant that the tickets were both non-refundable and impossible to change, which is lousy service in my view, but not unusual for tickets bought online. It also meant that the unusual winter weather was in danger of rendering my tickets void, but luckily everything worked out okay in the end.

I took a First Great Western train from Paddington to Bath:

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Sketching on the train:


On the return journey my train was cancelled, so I ended up spending quite some time at the small café at Chippenham station - it was much too cold to wait on the platform!

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Luckily my non-refundable ticket was good for the next train, since mine had been cancelled, but of course the next one was delayed, and completely stuffed with all the extra passengers from the cancelled departure. After a couple of stops I finally managed to grab a seat, and do a bit of sketching:

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I admit to preferring the London-Bath train, which was like the Danish InterCity trains with the seats grouped in fours around tables, rather than just crowded in behind each other like on economy flights.

Århus winter - taking the bus

Around London

I spent part of my trip in London, where I walked about the freezing city in my leaky boots, and thanked my lucky stars for the Tube!



One afternoon was spent looking for pens, and since I wanted a specific pen, in specific colours, it ended up being quite a quest. I was directed to a Cass Art shop, then shuttled from branch to branch until one of the shop assistants took pity on me and directed me to the London Graphic Centre - you can see a small map of my quest on the right here:

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Most of my trips on the Underground were quite short, but I had to bring home a sketch done there, and finally managed to scratch these down between several lines going back from Knightsbridge:

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Here are a sketch and a sticker-collage from picking up train tickets for my trip inland, and browsing the local bookshop:

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Despite the cold (and the leaky boots!) I did manage one outdoor sketch while in London. I had half a plan to sketch the protesters opposite Houses of Parliament, but there were only abandoned looking tents when I arrived in the freezing cold. Instead I did a sketch of the statue of Richard I, then scrambled for a café to restore a bit of feeling to my hands and feet! I think you can sense from the way this turned out just how cold I was:

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More sketches later.