First snow came these days and changed the scenery quite a bit. No wild boars today, the battue yesterday with many guns sounding probably chased them away for some time. There were only faint cracks in the twigs and the knocks of the nuthatchs to hear. The fairly quickly changing play light and shadows kept [...]

I picked up the big gouache sketchbook today to continue with the forest diary I had not touched since March. There was this total November stillness in the woods that I like so much. Even the jays made no sound and flew away without scolding while walked through the rustling leaves. I love the first [...]

Tree phone To “design” or better to illustrate your own Iphone case is now possible for many of us. Zazzle and Cafepress recently made it possible and in a couple of days there will be zillions of personal indispensable Phone cases on the globe. Therefore it cannot be a surprise that there is a tree [...]

The low sun in November puts a special light on the landscape. Shadows are longer, contrasts seem to be stronger too, the blue of the sky is more intense. In the forests there is an almost magic atmosphere. A few steps aside from the walking path I settled down to draw the shadows of trees [...]

Our visual memory is a strong tool, but drawing always from life does not train us to recall what we have seen. On a workshop years ago I heard from the tutor that it is possible to draw almost everything we have seen from memory quite accuratly. It might take some effort to recall visual [...]

There is again an interesting blog post on “Some Landscapes“, which is in my reader. This time it is about landscape poetry: The grey sea turns in it´s sleep. I wonder whether all the attempts to embrace landscape are not much more than cultivation of a sort of homey nostalgia. The more I get involved [...]