I've been drawing!

So, I finally got around to doing some drawing! I made myself a spiffy new header.

I drew it in Photoshop using my new Wacom tablet. For the uninitiated, a Wacom tablet is an electronic pen + drawing board which connects to your computer. This was my first time using it. It's easy once you get the hang of it but there's definitely a bit of a learning curve. 

Normally when you're drawing, you're looking at your hand moving over the surface you're working on. With a tablet, you have to train yourself to draw in one place (the board) whilst looking somewhere else (the computer screen). It feels really weird and unintuitive at first. You know what it's like when you try to write with your non-dominant hand? It feels a bit like that. To illustrate, this was me writing as "neatly" as I could:



It doesn't help that instead of using a desk, I have the tablet balanced on my knee with a one-year-old sleeping in my lap(!). It's school holidays at the moment and this is the only way I can get Luna to take a decent nap with her noisy older sister clomping around the house.

Ergonomic?

It's hardly an ideal set-up, but doable as long as I'm not drawing anything too detailed. 

Which brings me to my design. I wanted a new blog header and it seemed like the perfect little project to learn to use the tablet. I drafted roughly how I wanted it to look.



Those flowery blobs are supposed to be poppies, buttercups & forget-me-nots - flowers which remind of Reykjavík in the summertime. I wanted the design to be a nod towards Iceland without being all Elves! Volcanoes! Björk!, so using a few local (native?) flowers seemed like a good way to go. I also strongly associate these shades of red, yellow, blue & green with the colours you see on houses downtown, so it all tied in nicely. :)

Cute houses in downtown Reykjavík. Photo by the talented Bjørn Giesenbauer.

I decided to hand-letter the blog title instead of using type because have an ancient version of Photoshop which has doesn't have any good fonts.

You can see here that my handwriting became a bit more presentable with practice.

I was originally going to have the lettering all in the same grey script. It wasn't really working though, and ended up evolving into something else.

The lettering is a nice-ified version of my handwriting.

The top one is my unedited handwriting and the lower one is the finished product after some smoothing out. I'm quite pleased with it and really interested to try my hand at some more elaborate lettering when I get the chance.

I also drew some flowers. Lots & lots of flowers. I added daisies and violets and a few other species, all of which grow all over Reykjavík.

I drew each flower individually with a vague idea that I'd find away to fit them into the design later. This was a mistake. Arranging them in an aesthetically pleasing manner ending up being a epic pain in the butt. I spent way more time trying to get them to fit than I spent drawing the darn things!

Looking a little better...

I got there in the end. Voila! Behold, the finished product:

It's over-the-top, I know, but...I like it! It was a fun little project and I definitely feel a lot more fluent with the Wacom than I did when I started. I hope you enjoyed seeing how it came together! I have lots of ideas for new projects (in very different styles!) so I hope you'll check back soon. :) 

Exporting Wordpress blog to Blogger

I think I might move over here to Blogger. I've imported my Wordpress posts and now I'm trying to figure this place out. Please forgive the html tags mess, I'm working on tidying it up! In the meantime I hope you'll take a look around. You can see my blog in it non-messed-up state over here: asunnydayinreykjavik.com xx Sarah

Gullfoss waterfall + Geysir

Luna + me at Gullfoss.[/caption]

We got home from the summer cabin this afternoon. We didn't make all the stops on the way home that we'd wanted to as we were tired and Luna was getting fed up with being in the car. Oh well. We did however stop by Gullfoss (the "golden waterfalls") and Geysir yesterday. They're not my favourite places simply because they're as touristy as places get in this country. Spectacular & well worth visiting, yes, but hidden treasures they are not.

I of course took eleventy bajillion pictures:

Gullfoss[/caption]











[caption id="attachment_718" align="alignnone" width="820"] Strokkur (in the Geysir area).[/caption]





Geothermal pool - too hot for swimming![/caption]



On a completely different subject, I forgot to update that Raven does not need glasses. Yay! She was a little disappointed so she got a pair of purple sparkly sunglasses as a consolation prize.

In other Raven news, she's officially on school holiday for the next month. I have no idea how we're going to keep her occupied! She's already bouncing off the walls and talking about wanting to go back to preschool to see her friends. I guess we'll need to line up some play-dates. She's such an intense, energetic kid that keeping her busy is no small task. There's usually a lot going on downtown during the summer (festivals, free concerts, etc.), so we should find something.

Caves near Laugavatn

[caption id="attachment_683" align="alignnone" width="738"] Traffic jam.[/caption]

We've been at a cabin in the countryside this week. I say cabin, but this place is huge! Way bigger than our little apartment. Just wonderful. We're by a lake called Apavatn. It's quite close to Reykjavík, about an hour and half's drive.

We've been super lazy here, relaxing as much as is possible with two small kids (i.e. not very much). I feel slightly guilty about how little we've done, but at the same time it's been nice to have a break without feeling like we have to cram everything into our schedule.

Yesterday we took a little drive to some caves in the area.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="738"] The view from the bottom.[/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="738"] On the way up.[/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="738"] Caves![/caption]

What's interesting about the caves is that 100 years ago, people lived in them:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="738"] Painting of the cave house as it was 100 years ago.[/caption]

From 1910-11 they were inhabited by a young couple, Guðrún Kolbeinsdóttir and Indriði Guðmundsson, then just 17 and 22 years old. They sold food to travelers passing by. Within a year they had earned enough to move to Reykjavík, and left the caves.

A few years later, from 1918-21, another young couple moved in. During their time there Jón Þorvarðarson and Vigdís Helgadóttir had three children, two of which were born in the cave. Can you imagine? One of the children, Magnus Jónsson, is still alive today. He calls himself The Caveman. Of course.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="738"] Looks cozy, no?[/caption]

Raven was insistent that she was going to find some baby trolls in the cave.

Nowadays the house is gone. The caves are covered in moss, and graffiti carved into the soft sandstone.



[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="738"] I found Luna![/caption]

The view from inside the cave:

[caption id="attachment_690" align="alignnone" width="738"] Remember the horses that were on the road?[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_686" align="alignnone" width="738"] The view standing on top of the caves.[/caption]

I think today we're going to visit the Golden Circle: Geysir (the original geyser), Þingvellir (Thingvellir National Park) and the Gullfoss waterfalls, so I'm sure I'll be posting more pictures soon.

Drawings I'll probably never finish

This post is inspired by some other blog entries I've read recently. Presley at haunting olivia shared some 'bad' art (which I think is actually pretty good), and Cassy at knit the hell out confessed about her piles of "UFOs" (unfinished objects). I love seeing people's work in an unpolished state, whether it's a work in progress, a quick sketch, or finished pieces that just didn't quite work out for one reason or another.

Seeing as this is *supposed* to be my art blog and I haven't had time to draw anything new recently, I figure I might as well share some of my own UFOs.

(Please forgive the not-so-great image quality; I don't have a scanner. The grey splodges you see on some of the pictures are shadows cast by a dirty window, not parts of the drawings.)

This first one was something I started a couple of years ago to hang up in Raven's room. My plan was to do a mixed-media drawing/collage. I was going to draw tree branches with cut-paper leaves, and some paper flowers down the bottom.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="820"] Girl on a swing[/caption]

I quite like it, but it came out a bit stiff-looking. The rough preliminary sketch I did had more life & movement to it:



Still, I think it's nice and want to finish it.

This second sketch is based on a photo of Keith Richards' hands. I did it in...2003? after years of not drawing. I did it to see whether I could still draw. It wasn't intended to be used for anything, just a practice sketch.



In a similar vein, this next one is drawn from a photo of Iggy Pop (I love Iggy Pop!). Again, I wasn't planning on using it for anything, just an exercise. I had to stop because the level of detail was making my eyes freak out. I'll need new glasses before I attempt something like this again!





Back to drawings for children, recognise this? It's from Madeline, Raven's favourite book. Not much to say about this one. Again, it was supposed to go on Raven's bedroom wall.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="820"] "To the tiger in the zoo, Madeline just said, "Pooh-pooh."[/caption]

And one last one for (and of) Raven. I did it when she was around 18 months old and at the peak of her cat obsession. It looks better in person - the light was terrible. I need to make the colour a bit more intense, but otherwise it's more or less finished.

[caption id="attachment_651" align="alignnone" width="820"] Raven with the dapper Mr. Cat[/caption]

So those are my unfinished pieces. Now I want to know, what do you have in your unfinished projects pile? (It doesn't have to be art, it can be anything!) And what's keeping you from finishing it?

Thyme for tea

I had planned to write a proper entry around these pictures, but for whatever reason I'm just not in a very writing-y state of mind right now. Between the pun in the title and the fact that I just used "writing-y" as a word, it's really for the best that I step away from the keyboard.

We found wild thyme at Raven's preschool and took it home and made some tea. The pictures tell the story. Enjoy!

[caption id="attachment_575" align="alignnone" width="738"] Wild thyme growing at Raven's preschool[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_591" align="alignnone" width="738"] Collecting thyme.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_577" align="alignnone" width="738"] You use the flowers for tea and the leaves for cooking.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_578" align="alignnone" width="738"] The fragrance is unbelievable. Best smell ever.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_579" align="alignnone" width="738"] We didn't have a bag.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_581" align="alignnone" width="738"] Flowers rinsed and ready for some hot water.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_583" align="alignnone" width="738"] Steam! We didn't have any tea filters so we just threw the flowers right in.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_584" align="alignnone" width="738"] Sugar added.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_585" align="alignnone" width="738"] And stir.[/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="738"] Scoop the flowers out and drink![/caption]