Today I wanted to play with the greens of the sunny meadows and not with the shape of trees. I used the oil pastels in similar way as one would draw with dry pastels by breaking the sticks up in smaller pieces and drawing with the longer side of edge and not with the tip of the pastel.

I ran into various difficulties. One of the tricky sides of oil pastels is that once a certain amount of colour is applied one cannot add more. I had to scratch off some of the pastels in the tree top on the left side to “repair” the light parts of the tree top, but I could not get back to the fresh greens that I wanted to have.

With a few digital manipulations, mainly hiding the center fold of the sketchbook, I could turn this sketch into a nice postcard for sale.

Buy Spring in the apple tree grove landscape postcard on Zazzle

I spent a sunny afternoon hour with this oil pastel sketch of a rural backyard in our neighbour village. I used almost all the greens that come with the Neopastell 48 color set by Caran d’Ache to find out how they look on paper. There are nice cool and warm greens in different shades. Next time I want to apply what I learned on a landscape sketch with spring greens. In the second image large areas of the sketchbook pages are not covered yet.

A hot Saturday with 31°C pushed the greens out after cold and rainy days have removed most of the beautiful cherry and apple blossoms. But spring greens ,some yellow buttercups and dandelions decorate the meadows. I “finished” the sketch of the hut in the vineyard.

Cold rain and thunderstorms blew away most of the cherry and apple blossoms already, typical April weather.

This massive three floor framework building is the town hall at the village of Illingen. After long last I completed the set of four drawings. The framework is quite helpful in drawing architecture as one can use it as a grid for measuring proportions. From now on there will be more tree and forest drawings again, I promise.
If you would like to know what sort of music I listen to while writing blog posts check out this Duane show on WFMU.org

For those who are interested in some sort of Sebaldian nostalgia, romantic loaded reading about the sad truth of landscape reality I want to point out that amazon has started to deliver “Edgelands, journey into England’s true wilderness”

The discussion about copyright infringements on Pinterest continues. That is necessary as the recent changes on TOS by Pinterest haven’t changed a bit as far as the copyright issues are concerned. In fact Pinterest owner Silberman has taken the route to protect himself better against potential lawsuits by dropping the audacious claim to reserve the right to re-sell images that have found their way on his platform, that’s all.

Sean Broihier the owner of Fineartamercia.com, a site that meantime more than 90 000 artist use, has written an open letter addressed to artists and art enthusiasts. The letter pins down the serious issues with sites like Pinterest.

Fineartamerica leaves it to their users whether they want to display/use the Pin button or other social media sharing buttons on their art listings or not. I wish other sites like Squidoo.com would do the same instead of readily assisting Dr.Silberman with the red copyright health care button.

I managed to do this ink drawing just before a cold rain shower came down last weekend. Temperatures have gone up nicely and I look forward to continue the ink drawing series in my indian sketchbook during this summer. It is difficult to draw on that gampi paper which is a bit like blotting paper. But I like the old-fashioned and simple look that the drawings on this paper inevitably get.

My new ink batch is a bit too fluid,but I am sure that will change soon under the spring and summer sun.
During the past years I have bought a enough stock of these photo album books, bound in old sari cloths from india, for future projects. I believe that works in books like these have a better chance to survive than single sheets of paper.

Recently I updated my microsite on Sketchbooks (Link to Squidoo sketchbook site)and had to change a couple of links.
I re-discovered and added the sketchbook resources on access art for reasons to my link list in this weblog. Access art covers many different aspects of keeping and making sketchbooks. A lot of the content is available free for non-members.

Urban sketchers net work is spreading more and more and I also want to point out to the website of the German illustrator Felix Scheinberger, who published books on sketching and the use of watercolors. His online sketchbooks are a unique source of inspiration. I like the way he smashes out those sketches.

Finally I got a copy of Chronographie by Nikita Fossoul and Dominique Goblet. I feel lucky because as most of the books by Dominique Goblet also this one is practically out of print after short time. As far as I know the project is unique, it has taken years to completion which is typical for the works of Dominique Goblet. The book documents 10 years with portraits once per per week roughly. Each portrait drawing covers a full page.

The book is thick and heavy with hundreds of mutual portrait sketches and drawings. From my point of view it is interesting on different levels.

1. Drawing and illustration techniques
The book is a compendium of drawing and sketching multi media techniques. The book is filled of surprising works that inspire to leave well trotted paths in drawing and colouring.

The juxtaposition of the drawings by an experienced artists and a child that grows up and develops her own visual language is sparking more inspiration. Quite a few of the children drawings are stunning and downright beautiful and bring up questions about drawing skills and dexterity.

2. Nikita Fossoul and Dominique Goblet have written interesting introduction texts on the project (French and English). But the dialog in pictures between mother and daughter as it shows in the drawings talks in its own language and says more than 1000 words can say so to speak.

Particularly interesting is to see how the daughters approach changes from play to a more reflected approach as teenager or young adult.

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