Art school in Vyborg, Russia

Last summer when we visited Vyborg we also explored this interesting looking building 

It said it's a museum (islamic treasures from Hermitage) but we walked in a smaller door and found a nice photo exhibition about old glory of the town. But the interesting part was when we persuaded this Russian man to let us enter the art school's corridors that were first all closed. He spoke no English and we didn't speak any Russian. Unfortunately the school was on summer break so we couldn't see the classrooms but the parts we saw were really cool! 

It's sad that my school doesn't look like this because I really like the old and gracious vibe this place had.

We also went to see the Islamic treasures after the sneak peek and they were amazing! But u weren't allowed to take photos there (and every time I tried there were this one attendant looking me very angry so I end up not having any photos :))

Figure drawing class

Today we finished our figure drawing class where we made a huge pile of croquis and life studies. I really enjoyed the class and it was so instructive and I think I learned a lot! 

The lessons followed a routine where we first made some croquis (20 minutes and every two minutes our model changed the position, then break and again 20 minutes...) and after this we started the life studies where the model had the same position for longer time in 20 minutes sections.

I must warn you, there is a lot of pictures in this post but I wanted to share some of them with you. The first pictures are scanned croquis and after that there are some phone pictures of the life studies. The croquis are all almost the same size but I have picked up some of them so they look bigger.

(Click the pictures to enlarge)

First we did some basic "what you see" croquis with graphite pen

Then we painted only the shadows and tried to create the figures only by that

After the shadows we painted only the light 

Croquis done with ink and bamboo stick

Some 20 minutes detailed pictures

Then we first painted the main shadows and rhythm gray and then drew the figure with bamboo stick

And finally we combined the model with props and background

Then to the life studies. Today we had our feedback and we all exhibit our works and the teacher gave comments and made notes. 

Overall we did only 8 big studies (I did only 7 because I was sick and stayed home once) but it's so nice to see how they did get better by the end. Most of the drawing have been made with charcoal.

a study of a leg (the second photo was taken when we were making these detail drawings)

Detail of a face where only straight lines were allowed

Another detail

I'm so happy that in the Institute of arts we can continue making these figure drawings because it's something I really would like to learn and study more!

Hot chocolates

This flu I'm still having made me remember this old old post from years ago, when I had my very first blog

" Those of you who has been following my blog might know that I love love love all types of hot chocolates! Basically the idea of having all differend types of hot chocolates came up when I found out how much I love cafés and how much I hate coffee. So I got so fed up with only having one option in cafés (in Finnish cafés there are usually only 2 types of hot chocolate: With or without whipped cream - and of course there must be cream - so I only had one option)

so I started to create hot chocolates of my own just to make myself happy

Here I have wrapped up all the hot chocolates i have done pictures, so please enjoy: "

 Normal hot chocolate with grated chocolate

Hot chocolate with cinnamon and gingerbread

Hot chocolate (cold) with strawberry jam

Hot chocolate with hazelnuts

Hot chocolate (ice cold) with chocolate sauce

Hot chocolate with snow ornaments

Hot chocolate with peppermint

Hot chocolate with marshmallows

Hot chocolate with chocolate sauce

Hot chocolate with "New year" decorations

Hot chocolate with grated "Geisha chocolate" from Fazer

Making postcards

Last days I've been busy by doing some postcards and notebooks to my school's Christmas design market (Yes it's a bit early to think about Christmas but it's always good to start too early than too late). I'm really exited about the notebooks and I'll post some photos here when they are ready, but for now here are some pictures of the postcards (quality sucks, phone photos) but the surface of the cards took ink very beautifully and the paper's light gray color suited well with the Asian vibe.