Watercolors, Drawings and Trails

Watercolors. Back on Bornholm coast trail

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Tue, 29 May 2012 08:27:38 +0000

Right now I am back out hiking in fast changing weather, on the small island, Bornholm, in the Baltic Sea. Between Russia, Sweden, Poland, Germany and Denmark.

I use my phone and post mobile snapshots of my Watercolors from the coast trail.

Just got out of the wind after making this watercolor near a small fishing village called Svaneke

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The herring smokeries are everywhere on Bornholm, and with
the big chimneys they are great watercolor motives:

watercolor Bornholm, Herring Smokerie

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I walked by a lot of tiny wood sculpture houses, made by Lituaian Artists from across the Baltic Sea. This is how I remembered them.

small Ritual wood houses, sketched from memory, Nexo

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Painting in the rain

Bornholm watercolor

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Small fishing huts

Filed under: hikes

Bornholm watercolors Hike South Coast May 2012

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Sat, 26 May 2012 21:02:40 +0000

My rough watercolor impressions of the Landscape on the South Coast of Bornholm on a two days Hike along the Coast Trail facing the Baltic Sea

Trees falling into the Baltic Sea, Watercolor

Something I really love doing is hiking and painting watercolors along the trails, even though I find it difficult painting in sun, wind and sand. But to me these hikes are as much about just going with what ever I feel like sketching down, and less about trying to figure out the best perspectives, motives and results.

Still here are the rough watercolors, good and bad, from my latest hike to a small island out in the Baltic Sea. Where I spent a couple of challenged days alone with my watercolor gear on the trail along the sea.

Filed under: hikes, Watercolors

Looking without seeing

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:53:00 +0000

Drawing of people looking, and not…

Looking without seeing

Filed under: clipart, consciousness, education, illustrations, love, Philosophy, psychology, spirituality

Watercolor Sketch of fairy tale house

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:03:51 +0000

I’ve found myself sketching up strange places lately, even something that seem to come straight out of fairy tales and very, very remote from the modern architecture world. All as I try to figure out more about what a “place” is, maybe this one could be called a place, maybe someone would even call it a Home.

Think I would remember it if I passed by it somewhere.

Free drawing of a little fantasy house

Watercolor and Pencil sketch by Frits Ahlefeldt

Filed under: Houses, sketches

15 may Doing Watercolors in Copenhagen

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:48:48 +0000

Walk around Copenhagen as the day slowly gets warmer, back outside, doing watercolors and sketches of places that makes me stop:

( I will add more later today)

Watercolor Copenhagen – Corner of Borsen newspaper, Møntergade, Gammel Mønt street

See the place on Google maps Here

Here are some more from today’s watercolors from the streets of Copenhagen (15 may 2012)

Filed under: Houses, walks, Watercolors

Watercolor notes 14may2012

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:09:16 +0000

Time to break the stream of illustrations, with some watercolors, you can still see only illustrations, just click on: illustration. But decided to use my site HikingArtist.com here more as a personal sketchbook, with more loose sketches, ideas, notes and impressions, and not only finished illustrations.

So here are the first watercolors, notes and studies from today:

Sketch of a frog looking up

All watercolors by me: Frits Ahlefeldt

Filed under: notes, watercolor, Watercolors

Three Doors of Action

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:40:18 +0000

Sometimes the options can be boiled down to three choices:

Deciding the strategy before walking through the door

Free drawing by Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist

Filed under: ambition, business, climate, clipart, conservation, education, illustrations, innovation, life, love, parenthood, psychology, strategy

Electric car drawing

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Fri, 11 May 2012 06:19:36 +0000

Wonder what it will take to really make the electrical cars more eco-friendly

The ultimate electric car solution?

To produce a car is mighty expensive, in energy, in materials, and in the waste produced, even before the one ton iron thing leaves the far away factory. And when people then finally drive the things, one in each, most of the time, just a couple of times a day, while the car slowly starts to rust and starts to fall apart, they waste even more energy.

After 5-10 years, maybe more, the car will end up as waste, maybe a bit of it will be recycled, but the rest will just end up somewhere dripping toxic substances.

I haven’t even start to consider how much the whole road-infrastructure supporting the car-things costs us, both in land, that has now been covered with thick layers of oil products like friction-lowering asphalt layers. Land that would come to better use for nature, Bio-reserves, and/or farming. But also in the energy, work and effort that it takes to sustain all the life-supporting systems, that the car-things needs to live their short polluting life.

So I wonder if new shining cars will make anything sustainable better, or it is just a desperate move, to try to avoid real change, real public transportation and real sustainable development?

Filed under: climate, clipart, ecology, energy, global warming, green corridors, illustrations, innovation, sustainable living, technology

Small fishes Save the Sea drawing

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Thu, 10 May 2012 07:32:58 +0000

A lot of small fishes connecting up to write the text “Save the Sea”, They really wanted to write “Save the Ocean” but that was to long for them

Small fishes swimming to save the Ocean

All these small fish here swim in the Public Domain:

To the extent possible under law,
Frits Ahlefeldt
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
The Save the Sea – Fishes illustrations.

Inspired by the Penguins

The Fishes here got inspired by a lot of small penguins writing Stop Global warming on the ice – I take it that awareness of the ecological challenges we face are spreading through the Eco systems – could be that I find more creatures writing.

The penguin drawing

Both illustrations made by paper, watercolor, ink, water and me

Filed under: animals, biodiversity, climate, consciousness, conservation, ecology, education, energy, extinction, global warming, illustrations, overfishing, spirituality, sustainable living, wildlife

The List drawing

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Thu, 10 May 2012 05:00:08 +0000

Sometimes being on “the list” matters more than the real qualifications.

Drawing of a Key wondering if it is on the list

The List

Filed under: ambition, biodiversity, clipart, conservation, education, illustrations, innovation

My free drawings passing 500.000 views on Flickr – Thank You

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:40:08 +0000

My free CreativeCommons Drawings are now passing 500.000 views on Flickr.com and Christmas trees dominate my top 10

I have uploaded more than 4-500 drawings to the Flickr (one of the worlds largest image sites) during the last years. And I am very happy to see that I now pass 500.000 views there. The large majority of my drawings are about heavy things like Global warming, ecology, sustainable living, philosophy, society, love, family, life, psychology, people and other serious things and I think my drawings has been put to good use in a lot of different places.

But to my big surprise – Here is my all time top 10 on views on Flickr, so Far… Guess my 5-7 happy, defenseless Christmas trees really takes the winning price on Flickr, so far, half of my top ten views are of these Christmas trees.

Christmas tree in watercolor, the all time number one

My All time top image on my Flickr HikingArtist page

And here are my following nine most viewed illustrations on Flickr:

And as I am sitting here a late evening and looking at the Flickr counter passing by 499.838 views, I wonder if I should use this feedback to somehow adjust the way I do things, both here and on Flickr. Hopefully I can show you more about that soon and you are most welcome to give me feedback.

But most of all I am very grateful, thank you for checking out my drawings.

The above drawings by HikingArtist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

You can see all my CreativeCommons Flickr images here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hikingartist/

Filed under: business, clipart, illustrations, marketing, strategy, Uncategorized

The loser strategy to winning

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Wed, 09 May 2012 06:24:03 +0000

Drawing about the classic loosing way to try to make yourself look better by making everybody else look worse

The loser strategy

Wonder if it is like the shadow of an individualized society?

Free Drawing by Frits

Filed under: ambition, business, clipart, education, family, illustrations, innovation, kids, life, love, man-woman, marketing, Philosophy, psychology, strategy

science looking

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:44:12 +0000

Drawing I did about reading about Johannes Kepler and the change in our view of reality, vision and the universe, that he was one of the first to kick of and that have puzzled us and a lot of philosophers, artists, scientists and psychologists ever since just come to think of Carl Jung ex. Sitting wondering words like observations, seeing, visions and perception

Looking and looking

Free drawing by Frits Ahlefeldt

Filed under: ambition, clipart, consciousness, illustrations, innovation, life, Philosophy, psychology, spirituality

wake up call illustration

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:08:33 +0000

Drawing about when another reality is far, far away and the alarm clock works as a reality switch

Morning

Filed under: clipart, consciousness, education, illustrations, Philosophy, psychology, spirituality, sustainable living

When the only door is on the internet

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:34:21 +0000

Houses without doors

More and more places, shops and businesses wipe away their doors to the real world, and themselves away from their neighborhoods, so you can only visit them online, walking through their virtual welcome pages to meet their Photoshoped clip art employees, fresh from the beautiful people stock art 1 Dollar pages. Smiling their welcome out from a direct link to nowhere real.

What a strange world…

The nowhere internet shop

Filed under: business, clipart, illustrations, innovation, marketing, Philosophy, technology

Writing about the future at the vanishing point

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Fri, 04 May 2012 20:28:24 +0000

Illustration where I tried to play around with vanishing points, when I colored it up, it (unintentionally) ended up looking kind of British.

Blogging about what is at the end of the vanishing point

Filed under: consciousness, illustrations, life, strategy, sustainable living

Circle of Shoes drawing

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Tue, 01 May 2012 20:44:44 +0000

Illustration of a lot of shoes put up in a circle

Shoes walking around

Filed under: clipart, illustrations, life

Sky fishing

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:56:14 +0000

It is not always we catch what we imagined we would

When the results are different from the expected

Free drawing from Frits, HikingArtist

All those special situations when we gets surprised about things that turns out so much different from what we thought they would do.

Filed under: ambition, consciousness, education, illustrations, innovation, life, love, Philosophy, psychology, spirituality, strategy, technology

Hansel, Gretel and the bread crumb birds

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:09:36 +0000

Sketch about leaving bread crumb traces

Digital birds eating the breadcrumbs

Just a sketch that could change into something useful – Hansel and Gretel is a great old tale, (Grimm brothers Hänsel und Gretel) about a couple of lost kids in the woods, that use breadcrumbs to find their way back to reality. The story is now much used when talking about digital traces, getting lost online, tracking and marks, trails and tracing your own footsteps online – but also how companies and others are using the “breadcrumbs” to trace behavior online. And also how we use Twitter, Facebook, blogging etc. to “breadcrumb” us through life.

The old fairy tale is very interesting in the new online context, when we monitor each other while we all leave digital breadcrumbs online – twittering, talking, chatting and posting… I am still trying to figure out who the breadcrumb birds might be.

If the birds could be software erasing the digital traces or maybe someone living of them?

So for now I just call it a note.

Filed under: clipart, consciousness, illustrations, notes, Philosophy, technology

Two old trees drawing

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:34:58 +0000

Drawing of a couple of old trees that have seen a lot

Old friends

just a watercolor sketch to get more familiar with drawing trees

Strange – the big difference between drawing with ink and then watercolors without ink, still working on figuring out what it means for the expression

Both drawings are free to reuse

Filed under: clipart, illustrations, life, love, man-woman, spirituality

Good morning grumpy morning stone illustration

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:52:10 +0000

A drawing about nothing but a grumpy morning…

Grumpy stone

Filed under: clipart, family, illustrations, life, love, marketing, Philosophy, psychology, spirituality, strategy

Confucius inspired snail drawing

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 07:48:19 +0000

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop”

Confucius
Chinese philosopher & reformer (551 BC – 479 BC)

Snail on a mountain top

Version with the Quote:

Confucius quote version

Drawing by Frits is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Filed under: ambition, animals, clipart, education, illustrations, innovation, life, love, notes, parenthood, Philosophy, psychology, spirituality, strategy, sustainable living

Behavioral engineering illustration

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:29:38 +0000

Drawing about the idea that other people would be easier to relate to, if they where more alike and possible to (re)program

"we are here to help you" kind of guys

Filed under: clipart, consciousness, education, family, funny, illustrations, life, love, man-woman, Philosophy, psychology, strategy, technology

Researcher (Academicus Researchtius)

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 05:00:04 +0000

Researcher doing research

Drawing about a certain species of Academic, that spend its life with research, trawling through endless oceans of knowledge, reports, books and stories in its search for more knowledge, new different perspectives, know-how and metaphors.

Art Drawing by Frits licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Researcher (Academicus Researchtius)

Version for Taxometry use

Researcher Black and White Ink version

Filed under: ambition, clipart, education, funny, illustrations, Philosophy

Buy two shoes get one extra for free illustration

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 12:21:17 +0000

When consuming is all about getting more and more, for less

Shopping for the sake of shopping

Free Drawing about when shopping is not about what we need but just about getting a kick out of getting more for less

Filed under: ambition, business, clipart, conservation, funny, illustrations, life, marketing, psychology, strategy, sustainable living

Mother nature’s watch

Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:21:13 +0000

Spring time on nature's watch

Time in the modern digital reality is moving faster and faster, and as we optimize every second, and try to spare a few minutes every day I wondered if there could be a different scale in timekeeping on our watches.
So I tried to sketch up a different watch. One that synchronize to the rhythm of nature, the seasons and the different times of year instead of endless circles of seconds, minutes and hours. (Guess that won’t work on a digital watch though)