Day hike out of central Copenhagen 2. Marts 2010

Break and Watercolors in the snow

Nice and sunny day today, managed to walk a few hours (around 18 km. ) Solo walking in a very nice winter scenery, even though spring is getting closer and temperatures crawling up above freezing.

Here is a boot and my watercolors as I sat down to take a break

Yesterday (3 February 2010) I was out in the snow, sketching with my Moleskine book. Even though it was freezing cold I still managed to get a few sketches down before the water froze on the paper.
I was out there for around 5 hours, doing a few sketches and this little video of my walk:

My Moleskine book in the snow

Sketching snow tracks in the snow

Here are some of the sketches from the walk (approx. 5 hours )

Sketch of a tree

sled riding kids

As I was working I started getting the small ice crystals in the paint, as it can be seen here (vague)

I did a few more:

Woman with her dog

Finally I did this experiment, sketching a guy that passed by me, fast in watercolors to work with the way they froze: (Click on the image to see it large size)

Guy that passed by me, watercolors

Good day out sketching, even though the temperature was around 1-5 degrees Celsius
I especially like the change when the water is not drying up, but freezing – even though it gives a bit of trouble when the papers are put on top of each other (as can be seen in the last one)

Today (21 January 2010) I did a walk with my Moleskine sketchbook and watercolors,  to the old Hippie world of Christiania, where the Hippies still try to live according to the dreams they agreed on, almost 40 years ago.

Here are my watercolor sketches from today:

Small hippie shop in Christiania - Copenhagen

By mistake I burned the sketch in the edge, when I tried to dry it on one of the open fires they have on the street

Two guys talking between a couple of large wood sculptures

 It was freezing cold, lots of snow on the ground and my hands getting numb, so decided to go inside on a small cafe called “the moon-fisher” for a glas of tea.

The Hippie cafe "moon fisher" at Christiania (Moleskine sketch)

Back outside, I was heading down to the water, starting to sketch the amazing houses at Christiania

Christiania house between the old Copenhagen defense earth walls

 Getting all the way down to the water, it was frozen and brave parents where trying to clear the snow from the lake to make a small ice skating area for the kids, while the low winter sun where disapearing behind the city (last watercolor sketch)

Kids ice skating in front of the Christiania houses down to the lake

 It have been a cold day, today, but great to be outside and start to experimenting with combining walking with watercolor sketching in my Moleskine sketchbook… again

Seven rough sketches from my notebook

Today I went out to the airport with my daypack and watercolors to get a bit of practice.

First I hang out a bit at the Starbrucks cafe, an airport is a special place and I kind of enjoy watching people arrive and leave for far away destinations.

I was out to check my gear and do a few sketches,  and prepare for longer hikes.  So it was just a short hike,  to a small fishing village close by, called Dragoer.

With me I had my Moleskine sketchbook and my watercolors, here are the sketches before the rain made me find shelter in a small cafe’ with warm applepie and good tea. Here are the rough sketches from today:

Started out from the Copenhagen Airport

Worked with ink, experimenting with using watercolors with the ink.

Walking along the fence

The beginning was filled with impressions from the large scale of the planes and a lot of noise.

The Oresund Bridge

Ate lunch looking out at the huge bridge, quiet autumn weather, looked like rain, but still dry

Fishing village in front of me

The ferries to Sweden used to leave from out there, but now the bridge is there the ferries have gone

Following a small path along the water

The houses along the water was both beautiful and old, I really liked the next one:

Strange narrow house overlooking the coastline

Went back to pure watercolors for this one, think that is still my favorite way to work…

About this time it started to rain and I went into the village and waited for the paper to dry on a small cafe.

Street in the village

I did the last sketch, when I found a place where I was almost out of the rain.

The sketches today was a bit different as I used more ink than I normally do, nice to get back out and get back to the notebooks

Got out on the trail, under a not all blue sky – (Moelleaa trail, Copenhagen, Denmark) It was late morning and I started to walk by a middle sized lake a few km. across.

This day I was not too happy with my watercolors and I was trying to get into the right mood, forgetting about the results and just focus on painting and remembering to bring my brushes -  Kind of “back to the basics”.

So I walked out and sat down on a small wooden boat-bridge, looking for motives. Quite a few small fishes where swimming under the bridge and I decided to have a go at them and got my sketchbook out and started to draw the small blinking dots in the water.

Trying to sketch small fishes under water

It must have been about that time the ducks spotted me, I must have been on their bridge or crossed a line somewhere that in the duck world,  meant asking for trouble… or maybe company,  soon there where ducks all over, in the water and on the bridge.

The ducks where closing in

In the beginning I was cowardly trying to ignore the ducks and focus on painting the fishes under the water, but soon I had to give up, too many ducks on the top of the water and the fishes where all gone.

I sat there, just looking at the increasing number of ducks. There was a bit of sun and I decided to forget about painting and ducks for a while and stretch out on the warm quit bridge instead. I put my pack behind my head and closed my eyes, listen to the trees and the small waves.

Maybe the ducks saw it as a gesture of surrender… or maybe it inspired them, because around me on the bridge a few ducks followed suit, put their head under their wing and took a nap.

A bit later, when I opened my eyes there where sleeping ducks all around me and it kind of made me smile.

First time I have been taking a nap together with a bunch of ducks – great day.

One of the ducks came up close to check me out

Went hiking today and a few hours away from home I was ready to start painting, went into my day pack to get my gear out but realized I had forgotten my brushes.

Sat there and wondered what to do.

Found some old charcoal  and started drawing instead – haven’t been using that for years but it was kind of fun to get back to it:

Sketch of an old oak - made with charcoal

Fast sketches with charcoal

Finally I decided to give it a try with the watercolors and ink – I found a stick, shaped it with my pocket knife and went on to leaves and finally the ultimate basic… using my fingers

Cows - drawn with sticks, leaves and my fingers

I’m going out again tomorrow, so this time I hope to remember my brushes…

Taking the sea side around some famous cliffs – the video

I am researching a trail here on Stevns, but as the trail went inland, I decided to walk down to the foot of the vertical cliffs, where the Baltic sea meet the light blue flintstone beaches. My goal was to see if I could  find an alternative and more exiting way around the cliffs and at the same time get a bit closer to what happened here 65 million years ago, when something really big hit the earth and wiped out around 75 percent of all animal species.

Here on Stevns there are still traces of this event, as a thin layer of almost black Fish clay up on the cliffs.  The  fish clay here  has an extremely high amount of the very, very rare metal Iridium, that is almost only found in outer space or spread around the globe when very large meteors hits Earth. And as the fish clay here can be dated to the exact time the mass extermination took place, many now think that a meteor caused it.

Here is my note of the place and the meteor (Just started experimenting with making these notes and adding them here)

the meteor and Stevns on the map

When I come down to the beach it is around noon, I walk past a few geologists and tourists (the geologist are the ones with the small rock hammers) and head for the far end of the beach, where the cliffs goes right into the water. It is low tide now and I had kind of hoped I would be able to walk around the cliffs without getting wet feet. I  decide to take my boots and pants off and see if I can get around the cliffs in the water and maybe even find some fossils on my way.

A few minutes later I am slowly moving forward in the shallow water under the dripping chalk cliffs, trying very hard to keep my balance on the slippery flintstones down at the bottom without getting my backpack all wet. I get a good grip on a flintstone, that is sticking out of the cliff and stop for a minute.

Finding a way around the cliffs

I know that right up there over my head is one of the world’s most famous profs that something went terrible wrong on earth for around 65 million years ago.

Something that was so devastating and dramatic that it wiped out around 75% of all animal species on the planet, including all the Dinosaurs, and more than half of all known plant species when this something turned the Earth subtropical climate into a deadly freezing arctic dessert for an everlasting 5000 years.

It is this change that makes geologists from all over the world swarm to Stevns Clint, because here they can eyewitness and study this event as a thin band of fish clay, that testifies one of the most dramatic events in the Earth’s ancient past.

The experts can’t quite agree, but most of them now think it was an enormous meteor, maybe more than 10 kilometers across, that changed everything in a second, when it hit the earth in Mexico (Yucatan meteor link) and spread an inferno of Iridium, dust, fire, earthquakes and volcanoes all over the planet, that again created a total darkness, killed most of the life on Earth and froze evolution to a dramatic halt, for a few thousand years before a brand new beginning would see the light of the sun. A beginning where the mammals, instead of the dinosaurs would play the main role.

On the beaches here, and in the cliffs are fossils of the life both after and before the dramatic change. Most of them are small, but some years back someone found a tooth from a Mosasaur here, a few kilometers further south.

Mosasaur and the mosasaur tooth found on Stevns

The Mosasaurs were fierce looking sea predators up to 17 meters long and near relatives to the snakes, but the Mosasaurs lived at the times of the Dinosaurs and died out together with them back there 65 million years ago… but they must have been a bit of a sight.

Looking out on the water I appreciate that they are not roaming around here anymore, as I am out of my element here in the Baltic sea, wearing my backpack and feeling my way forward along the loose rocks at the bottom.

Finally I made it around and could walk up on the next flintstone beach, happy, even though I didn’t find any fossiled Mosasaurs.

Here is a video from my mobile of me in the waves  trying to get back on land somehow…

Links to more info about Stevns Klint

General information about the Tramp path along Stevns Cliffs

more tecnical Geological information about Stevns Klint

Link to info about the Meteor that hit earth 65 million years ago

My story about a short  research hike to Stevns Klint in Denmark,  using my Moleskine Notebook to make sketches along some old and famous chalk cliffs in Denmark

Moleskine has quite a reputation as the authentic notebook used by Van Gogh, Picasso and other famous artist and writers. One of them is the writer Bruce Chatwin, that wrote “songlines“, a book I have been inspired of – so I wanted to check out these much famed notebooks on the trails and this is my first trip where I used Moleskine books for more than notes.

My trip went to one of my favorite coast trails in Denmark – “Stevns coast-path” (in danish “Stevns trampesti”) On the trail I brought my camping gear, tent and also my watercolors, brushes and a brand new Moleskine book with blank pages.

The first sketch is from the train overlooking the flat top of the Chalk cliffs, and is amazing to think that right under this classic landscape is a more than 1000 meter thick massive block of chalk.

Sketch from the train

I was heading for the small fishing village “Roedvig”  at the end of the edge where the cliffs fall into the Baltic Sea. Here the locals have created a small trail, only for hikers, right on the edge of the more than 40 m. high cliffs.

The cliffs are in all kind of shades of white and pale yellow, with blue shadows and fine stripes of darker flint material. The white makes the chalck cliffs a very attractive motive for watercolors and gives a lot of opportunities to let the white paper shine through the transparent watercolors.

Moleskine sketch from the coast trail

Along the edge are several old mines and chalk pits where a lot of people used to work, digging out the chalk and preparing it for different kind of agricultural or industrial use.  But today almost all the pits are closed and lies as large holes overgrown with rare orchids and other species. Here and there is an old chimney or other structure still standing, and I also did a few sketches of these.

Old brick chimneys

Later on the first day I came to what might be the most famous attraction on the 22km. long trail, “The Højerup Church”, an old church right on the edge of the cliffs.

A part of the church was lost to the waves of the Baltic Sea in 1928, when a dramatic landslide ripped the church of its chancel and made the small place famous.

I got there in the evening and pinched my tent for the night, so I could paint the church and cliffs  in the early morning when the low morning sun would hit this east facing place.

The Hoejerup Church high up and on the edge of the cliffs

Hoejerup is a very special place in the morning, also the chalk colors the sea so the colors change from clear green to all kinds of blue, between turquoise and indigo.

After the church I did a few more sketches of things on the way.

Here is the gallery of all the Molekine sketches from the trip:

So all in all I learned a lot about sketching watercolors on Moleskine books on this first “Moleskine” research trip and it was a real challenge to sketch on the thin paper and work in the strong wind on top of the edge – but I am keen on seeing how I can push this further and look forward to show you my next sketches.

One of my favorite trails is the coast trail around a small island in the Baltic

But it took me years before I managed to walk all the way around it, and in the beginning it was almost like there was some kind of spell, that made it impossible for me to get all the way around the small, scared and more than 1.7 billion old granite rock in the middle of the Baltic Sea

sketch from Bornholm

But that is many years ago now and since then I have tried to walk  around Bornholm at least once a year.

Last year I went over there again…

sketch from a hike

Here I will put stories about my own hikes – I am updating this section at the moment (28 july 2009) so what you see here are mostly experiments where I try to find out how to present my watercolors in combination with text.

The first image was from a cold winter hike, the next is from this summer, last one was  on the same day.

Warm day where everybody were out and enjoying the weather.

Moleskine note - lady on a bench

Sometimes I take notes on watercolor paper, other times I just sketch my notes in my moleskine notebook

Fast watercolor sketch of a girl with brown hair