Jun 282 min read

June Newsletter: On Sketchbooks, Recharging and Doing (almost) Nothing!

Today I'm on the last day of my summer vacation! I’m happy to say that I’ve managed to tune down and recharge. YAY to that! I’ve traveled with my family to Berlin, rode with my husband on his motorbike for three days, visited the annual Viking festival, visited my parents in the countryside and stayed at home and often doing absolutely nothing productive! It's been wonderful. It can be hard escaping the nagging feeling of having to be productive ALL THE TIME when working to build skills and a career as an artist. I am very happy I was able to shed some of the stress that had built up over the past months and now I feel much more relaxed and able to take on what comes next.

Before my vacation I had set myself the goal of getting more used to carrying my sketchbook everywhere, not just in my backpack. That has worked really well and now I feel kind of lacking without it. I’m using a Sakura A5 for regular sketching at the moment and highly recommend it. The paper has a warm yellow tone and the binding is strong. If the paper is too white, my eyes get more tired. Sakura is a lot like the Moleskine sketchbooks, but not nearly as expensive. I have no idea why that is as the quality seems the same😕

Although I had my sketchbook on at all times I did most of my on site sketching in the Berlin Zoo & Aquarium and the annual Viking festival in Hafnarfjörður. I’ve then used some time sitting at my desk and refining these sketches and have already shared some on my social media. Then I also did some painting and grabbed stuff from my, now considerable horde of, art supplies and painted another one of the merfolk (images in this post). The original drawing was made during the #mermay challenge last May. I refined it a bit, shaded it with black pastel (like coal but denser) and colored it with watercolors and inks. Then I scanned it into the computer but the green color of the seaweed came out brown. I did not find out why though (I'm using an Epson perfection V370 Photo scanner). I decided to let it slide and made a few touch ups in Photoshop and here she is in full exposure!😄