For most people drawing foreshortening is difficult and I am no exception. I remember very well my first exercise from the Bert Dodson book “Keys to drawings” (my favorite drawing books on amazon). He requests the reader to draw the own left or right hand with the fingers pointing to the viewer. That exercise gets [...]

I found an old paperback on my book shelf an AKAI Jazz and rock discography from the 1980′s and could not resists to use it a sketchbook for quick landscape notes. The drawing is made with a Pentel ink brush pen, a tool that I can highly commend.

For the next small oil pastel sketch in the woods I selected a detail view of some trunks in the background. Is started with black and a dark grey as basic colors for the trunks and added other, lighter colors on top. Over time one learns about layering and depending on the wanted result may [...]

It happens regularly that people stop by when I draw somewhere and say something like I wish I had your talent. My standard reply is that I have no talent but a strong butt. Today I stumbled on two awesome stories about people who make their living by drawing, which might motivate the one or [...]

Buy this shirt on SKREENED Skreened is my new outlet for mostly odd or even slightly excentric shirts. This is a more conventional oilpastel drawing on a shirt for Black blues fans. 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 [...]

Luc Tuymans – pen drawing by M.Stankewitz 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 [...]

Taking a short tour around the Abbey Maulbronn takes not much more than an hour with plenty of time to sketch and take photographs. Spring, Autumn and Winter are the best seasons as to light and colors for a visit to Maulbronn. The view on the quiet lake is beautiful at around 17.30 -18.00 h [...]

Unfortunately I can’t remember where and how I found this film and the portfolio of the artist Alice Shirley.  The artist does amazing ink drawings.

As long as there is no wind I still like to go out to sketch. I found a fairly dry place underneath the layers of beech foliage and decided to make notes of the forests grid of tree trunks. As I neglected the foliage this image looks like winter. I buy ink in bigger bottles [...]

The forest surprises and inspires me each time I go out. Usually before I do anything with my sketchbook in the woods I sit down to make some notes about what is around to see,smell and hear. That helps to make the “connection” to nature, to relax and to get ready for sketching. Today I [...]