It amazes me how many hunting perches we have in the woods over here. No matter where you can see a hunting perch every 300 meters or so, not to speak of those ruins that lie around decaying slowly.  This one obviously has been rebuilt.  The place around was made up almost like a workshop. [...]

Sixteen years ago I bought an exhibition catalogue at Baden-Baden: Franz Gertsch woodcuts. In the title of that catalogue is an Albrecht Dürer quote, which I have difficulties to translate: “Die Kunst liegt in der Natur. Wer sie herausreissen kann der hat sie.” –>”Art is in nature. Those who can tear her out possess her.” [...]

OLIVE TREE NEAR FOURFOURAS, roller ball pen, Sketchbook Crete, 2009 courtesy Albrecht Rissler. Today I want to point out to a recent addition to the blogroll of this blog “drawing landscape” by Albrecht Rissler. For all those who are interested in drawing landscapes and trees this new weblog will be a resource of inspiration. The [...]

I documented this sketch of a clearing in woods in a few snaphots with my mobile phone camera. 1.First the sky and the background were sketched with a big brush (2 inch brush from the DIY-market) in thin washes of colour 2.With the next smaller brush size (no16) some more detailed forms and darker tonalities [...]

Since April 2009 I run a shop on Zazzle.com, a company that lets you produce many different customized products in print on demand. I always admired those designers and the work of artists or illustrators, what ever you may call them, featured on the Zazzle blog. There have been quite amazing and inspiring people interviewed [...]

How to draw trees by Frank M. Rines is the second cheap book on drawing trees I want to review here. The first edition of this book was published already in 1936 under a different title. The paperback copy I bought was published in 2007. The book is similarly constructed as the previously reviewed one [...]