Sketch of the day

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My Favourite Coffee Pot – Broken

When an old favourite object breaks, I take a picture or make a drawing before throwing it away.

My wife has promised to try to re-attach the handle with epoxy glue. Besides being a sculptor and an archeologist, she is a professional restorer specialized in polychrome sculpture. So maybe there is still hope for this old pot.

My long-suffering sneakers

Very old high tops I had to finally throw away in Paris. They were not a famous brand and made in Czechoslovakia, but they had lasted long. So long that the textile parts had faded from black to purple.

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Senate square, Helsinki

Senate square, Helsinki
I kept being interrupted by heavy downpours that almost washed away this drawing. I opened my umbrella and switched to water-proof markers.

Most of the buildings on the square were designed by Carl Ludvig Engel, all in the neoclassical style.

I love this square because it exemplifies the forces that shape a city. On its four side are:
1) The Church
2) The University
3) The Senate
4) A mixed bag of commerce: Shops, a bank, a café that also shows art movies (one of my favourites, but now closed for renovation). The mayor’s residence is squeezed a bit on the side, and there used to be a police station, but they got bumped.

– And The Czar in the middle of the square.

I’ll get some more sketches done later when the tourist buses leave…

Sketchbook Helsinki August 26, 2010_1

Yes, it’s a huge ferryboat behind the building. It’s bigger than the buildings in the old town.  They cross the Baltic between Helsinki and Stockholm daily.

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A ray of sunlight during a rainstorm

Mixed media on paper.

There was a break in the clouds and the sun transformed the highway into a river of gold.

I spent my lunch hour trying to capture the effect.

This is a view from the city of Espoo towards Helsinki. The little peaks you can just barely make out behind the bay are in downtown Helsinki. In the summer I come to work by bicycle, on a bike path running in the woods on the right side of the highway, over a series of little islands.

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Helsinki sketchbook: Sunny Windowsill full of Cacti

As my day job grew more and more demanding, I had no time to paint. I realised I had to start sketching once more, simply to keep my artist self alive.

Inspired by Danny Gregory’s “Creative Licence”, I started drawing objects around me. It’s something I had done before, but not as a conscious exercise.