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Sketching outside

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:21:26 GMT

Sorry I'm not posting much these days, my life is super busy - but a few days ago I found the time to sketch outside. (It's the park "Planten un Blomen" in Hamburg.) Only a fast ten-minute drawing with watercolors and acrylic markers, I'm afraid, but better than nothing, I guess. Life is not the same without art!

So, here's my sketch...

...and here's a picture of the park itself, with my sketchbook obstructing the nice view. ;) Seriously, taking a photo of art against the light is a bad idea; you can see what it did to the colors... I only took this picture to show the place.

By the way, in this photo, you can see how much the angle of incidence matters when it comes to light on a water surface! From where I was sitting, the water looked murky and dark with only a few blotches of color where stuff was reflecting. When I stood up to take the photo, suddenly, the changed angle meant the water appeared light because of the reflected sky! Amazing how these things go...

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Barley in Quinacridone Gold

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 18:35:07 GMT

A somewhat older ATC that had been lying around in a drawer because my swap partner had not been online for a very long time. Well. I was finally able to send it, so, here's a picture!

Watercolor painting completely in Quinacridone Gold, a pigment that unfortunately is not in production anymore. (Which is a shame. It's one of my favorite colors!) Oh, and I used masking gum and decided I hate the stuff. (These days, I'd simply use a white gel pen for the detail work. Much easier!) It was impossible to remove all of it from the paper, so there still are some specks of gum on the finished painting... Oh well.

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Ivy on tree stump. Sketchbook page.

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 07:28:57 GMT

A sketchbook page that turned out interesting enough to show, not least because of the new-to-me materials. :) The cracks in the wood looked pretty enough that I had to stop and draw them.

Okay, the acrylic pens are not new. I use those all the time! Here, I used a combination of various brands (Liquitex, Amsterdam Acrylics, some others) and they're all awesome - I'm not picky with my sketching supplies as long as they work properly!

...which brings me to the Sennelier ink brush pens, which are new to me. I actually received them years and years ago (in some advent calendar, which is where I get most of the art supply surprises) but never touched them because of their reputation. Basically, they don't work properly - they blotch and leak all the time. Which makes them really fucking useless when it comes to sketchbook tours. No surprise here: I had exactly the experience that others before me described. There's ink coming out. All the fucking time. It's not stopping. If you pause painting even for ten seconds or so, there will be a drop of ink collecting at the tip. I wonder who designed this and who the fuck decided, "yes, this is a marketable product, let's launch it"... WTF?!?

But also, something happened that I really did not expect: I actually really like these ink brush pens. XD Yes, you read that right. They're actually a lot of fun to paint with, if you like a little bit of adrenaline in your life. It makes you work quickly and fill the page with color, and if you hesitate... You know what will happen... XD XD XD The colors themselves really are lovely! (I mainly used brown and a bit of dark green on this page of already brown-ish paper.) I love the brush tips, too - those are actually excellent quality, the right combination of soft and springy. These pens could be great if not for this one little drippy issue... I will never take them traveling again, though. I'm storing these pens tip up (!) in a jar on my desk because holding them tip up is really the only way to keep them from leaking.

Paper is the Hahnemühle Toned Watercolour book (in 14x14 cm, which is something like 5.5*x5.5''), another excellent product if you ignore one tiny issue - in this case, that it's fantastic as long as you avoid the watercolours. I really like to use it with my acrylic pens. :)

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Two Forest Dragons With Colored Pencils...

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:30:39 GMT

...on colored paper. :)

Are you surprised to see a pencil drawing from me? I am surprised I made one... But Melodrama very generously gifted me a set of twelve Caran d'Ache Luminance pencils, so, obviously, she gets the first ATC I drew with them. :)

Unfortunately, the set doesn't have a brown (which is kind of impractical when you mainly draw botanicals, LOL), so, I had to improvise a bit by using brown-ish paper (the Clairefontaine PaintON in "Terracotta", a relic from last year's advent calendar) and letting the color shine through in places.

The tree bark is mainly thin layers of orange and dark blue (and a bit of black) mixed with the paper's own tone. On the dragons themselves, I noticed that the pencils are much more opaque than I expected. (Usually, I use Faber Castell Polychromos and the occasional Prismacolor, both of which are a bit more transparent despite also being sold as artists' quality.) I would have thought the green tones would shift much more toward olive green, but they’ve remained surprisingly vibrant. They were muted practically only where I applied less pressure and the paper shows through, which turned out to be an exciting effect for dragon scales.

Anyway... I'm having a lot of fun with my new pencils! Am thinking of buying an additional brown, though. The workaround went fine as far as these things go, but I don't want to be limited to one paper color...

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Dragon ATC

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 05:52:07 GMT

Have a cute dragon picture!

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Happy Valentine's Day!

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 20:55:03 GMT

Again, I made the fitting color for the occasion:

Living Rose. :)

I'm kind of busy, but hey, making paint is my way to relax - and anyway, I always need large amounts of dark red, so... XD

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Watercolor! Happy Solstice!

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 21:41:59 GMT

No, this was actually not planned, but a funny and very fitting coincidence: finally, my newest homemade watercolor is ready! Today is the best day to publish a paint called "Living Sun", right? Happy Solstice to everyone who celebrates, and a wonderful time to everyone else, too! :D

Filling the pans took a while: I learned that PY159 is a very annoying pigment, even more difficult to work with than the PB71 I already complained about. It loves to unmix and it loves to make awful lumps that no amount of grinding managed to remove: after an hour, new lumps inevitably formed. I'm soooo glad I somehow got this into the pans!

I added a small amount of PY138 because... PY159 granulates nicely but is not a particularly intense color. So, the PY138 (which is a cool and very intense yellow) unmixes on the paper from the (warm) PY159, and it's an effect I'm actually very happy with. Looks much nicer in real life than in the photo!

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The Chess Advent Calendar

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 09:23:52 GMT

This year's Advent calendar was made by Semja for me, and it's AWESOME! Chess all the way! :D

( Just look at this lovely modelling! )

I always admire when people are good at working with clay and/or modelling paste - it's one of the techniques I've tried, more than once, to no avail. Lucky for me that Semja has this skill!

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Baking. Hazelnuts. Orange marmalade.

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 22:00:05 GMT

It's that time of the year - I may not celebrate Christmas, but I celebrate everything around Christmas, just because. (Yes, I have an Advent calendar again, too. Okay, three Advent calendars. (In exchanges with artist friends, because store-bought calendars are boring.) You get the idea. I really like all the Christmas-y stuff!) Part of that is, of course, the food. So, here's some very classical Christmas baking! (Hazelnuts! Orange marmalade! YAY!) A bit early, but... I don't care. The supermarkets are starting to play that awful music, so, if I have to live with that, at least I can have the good stuff of the season as well, right?

Boyfriend already made an Advent wreath last weekend! (No candles, just branches and glittery stuff.) He met with some friends and they crafted together. :)

And I baked.

( Just in case you are interested in the (very simple) recipe... It's behind the cut. )

These... Won't survive long... XDD

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Gum Arabic Solution

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 18:27:57 GMT

Just what the title says: I made my own gum arabic solution. I want to make my own watercolor binder (yes, I'm trying to save money XD what else?), which needs some more additives (glycerine and clove oil, neither of which I have at home - yet), but... This was pretty straightforward, and I thought I'd share some pictures of the process.

(Crossposted over at prototypediablerie, a community for DIY things.)

( Pictures and description behind the cut. )

I'm very happy this worked so well. :3

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Watercolor: North German Essentials XD

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 15:09:47 GMT

If there is one color that defines the North German autumn, that would be this one.

Okay, technically, heather season is already over, but... It's definitely not a coincidence that I decided to produce this particular shade of granulating purple.

In case you were wondering: yes, the Lüneburg Heath has some heather. XD That's a bit of an understatement, actually: heather bloom is such a spectacular view that people track it online so you can find the best spots for heather-viewing... (Oh, and they have pretty pictures, too.) Ah, unique North German hobbies. XD

By the way, the weather models predict the year's first frost for this weekend. Kale, YAY! (The kale plants need frost before they can be harvested and eaten.) I'm so looking forward to kale season! :)

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Useful color...

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 19:35:31 GMT

... for me. XD As in, I'm likely the only one ever to use this.

My usual "shadow color" is PV23, which is - unless we count some extremely rare and extremely expensive alternative - pretty much the only blue-violet available on the watercolor market, but lately I've been wishing for an even more blue-ish tone and a bit of granulation in my shadow zones, so... This is PV23 together with ultramarine blue (PB29) and ultramarine violet (PV15). I'm very happy with the result, though I'm aware this is a product for a target group of one. XD

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Watercolor-making...

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 12:58:55 GMT

...or: the chemical adventure goes on. I was missing a yellowish color in my little landscape paint set, so, this is what happened. Still very wet; will likely need ages to dry. As usual.

When used relatively dry, the color looks like a relatively neutral "normal" ocher. When used very wet and/or on textured paper it unmixes into warm yellow and (thanks to the PW18, which is a dark dusty rose really) more reddish dark zones.

Pigments: PY138, PY154, PV19, PW18

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Weird Watercolor

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 22:34:04 GMT

This... is PB71, a pigment that's typically not used in watercolor - and now I know why. XD

I mean, after a lot of hard work on finding a binder composition from which the pigment doesn't immediately unmix before drying, I somehow managed to produce something that passes as watercolor, but also, this thing granulates a lot, to the point it's essentially useless unless you enjoy painting snowy landscapes or obscure meteorological phenomena. (Which I don't. But, hey, this has to be the best paint for snowy watercolor landscapes... It's very lightfast, too.) Whatever. It sure was an interesting experience.

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Calycanthus ATC

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 16:35:56 GMT

Another botanical ATC (6,4 x 8,9 cm), and the first attempt to actually use my new selfmade watercolors. Turns out they work as expected, with textures and everything, which is a relief, because otherwise I'd be stuck with a year's supply or so of green paint I hate. XD Of course, I had to use some other (store-bought) greens on this as well, but that's okay. (It's perfectly clear that only two greens are not nearly enough.) I'm just glad I didn't botch things.

Used watercolors:
Michael Harding: Titanium White, Pyrrole Red, Bright Green Lake, Phthalocyanine Green Lake, Dark Morellone Earth
Schmincke Horadam: Dunkelrot
Isaro: Magenta
Nila Colori: Ocra Violetta Armena
My own paints: Living Tree, Living Forest

I didn't need the blue and the brown for this picture (come to think of it, I almost never need blue), but test paintings with those (and, ugh, they really look nicer than in this photo; sorry, bad lighting here) will follow soon.

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The watercolor-making project goes on...

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 11:19:38 GMT

...or: more fun with chemistry. I have to do something useful with my skills after all! XD So, here's my newest color, "Living Tree".

This time, it's supposed to look like leaves - with a bit of granulation to make botanical painting more convenient. I can already predict I'm going to use this color quite often. Maybe the next project is going to be a sky blue - then I have an (almost) complete landscape set!

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Making more watercolor because it's fun.

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 15:51:58 GMT

My newest watercolor-making experiment! Producing this stuff at home is a lot of work, but hey, it gets me some colors not commercially available, so... XD

I wanted a supergranulating multi-pigment color that unmixes when you use it very wet, and I think it worked just fine! On rough (Torchon) paper, it creates these interesting effects. I think I'm going to use it a lot in landscape sketches!

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Knife tip geometry!

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 20:50:58 GMT

First things first: no, this is not a comprehensive list of knife tip geometries! There are so many of them - and most of them so highly specialized - that, if you need one of them, you know... XD So, in order to give a "beginner-friendly" overview, I've narrowed it down to four types that are common enough you may actually encounter them in real life without having to look for them in a specialized store.

Let's look at these in some detail! (With the caveat that, of course, tip geometry is not the only thing that determines a knife's overall function. Material matters. Blade thickness matters. Grind matters. Handle design matters. Size matters. XD And so on. Really, this can only serve as a rule-of-thumb - but we have to start somewhere when trying to determine what a knife is for, right?)

( Explanations of these four knife tips. )

Anyway... This (grossly over-simplified, I know) entry will hopefully help you identify what kind of blade you are dealing with, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and what tasks people will likely use it for. (None of this is intended as legal or professional advice; don't sue me, yadda, yadda. If you do dangerous shit with sharp objects, I'm not responsible.)

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Astronomical acknowledgement

Sat, 21 Jun 2025 11:42:21 GMT

Happy solstice! :3

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Lemon Bars...

Sun, 18 May 2025 14:56:47 GMT

... or: interesting exotic food I simply had to try. XD

Lemon bars are not something I'm used to, but a friend mentioned they made them, and I was curious. So, I found a recipe on the internet and made my own. I'm not sure whether they are supposed to be crumbly like that or whether I messed something up, but anyway, they're very edible. Like... very gooey lemon cake. An interesting experience, to be sure. XD

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Never Mock a Fish

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 16:38:47 GMT

Never Mock a Fish (535 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Duelling, shadow play, Storytelling, Fantasy, honor duel, Humor, Swordfighting
Series: Part 5 of The Silent Square Chess Club
Summary:

Ah, yes, honor duels and goldfish. Fennar tells an excellent story.

Today's example of shitty writing exists only to express my deep dislike of story structure. German storytelling? Usually linear, with some kind of arc. Platt storytelling? Usually cyclic, with some kind of refrain. How badly can these two approaches clash? YES.

(A trainwreck, but I had fun. And an excuse to use my super shitty goldfish fight scene.)

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Spell Bottle

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:03:26 GMT

Spell Bottle (530 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Chess, Fantasy, Magic, Dark Magic, Curses, Humor
Summary:

Oh, the things that can happen at chess tournaments... But no worries. Thilo has help from Henrik.

Very loosely based on a writing prompt from yhlee - thank you!!!

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What do I write tonight?

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 20:29:58 GMT

I want to write something tonight, I just don't know what. Oh, but I figured out how to collect the stories (well, "stories", or rather "random scenes") I've written so far in that world in a series on AO3, so, here's the overview: The Silent Square Chess Club. For now, I'll stay in that world, though I've given up on organizing it into any kind of continuous narrative. But what am I going to write?

A) More gratuitous violence.
B) Gratuitous chess.
C) A story about storytelling.
D) Pretend there is a plot.
E) Pretend I'm doing any kind of worldbuilding.
F) Something else. (Help?!? I'm stuck.)

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Shadow Introductions

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 20:09:27 GMT

Shadow Introductions (759 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Summary:

Vinn is sent to a chess club. Fennar, everyone's favorite shadow theater performer, handles the introductions. Everyone is being their charming selves.

A shorter and funnier scene today. :)

Remember how I was threatening to send poor Vinn to a chess club? Well. I did. XD For a simple "introduce the characters" scene, this was surprisingly hard: I first tried this from Vinn's point of view, but FAILED BADLY because Vinn doesn't have enough understanding of social dynamics to offer any kind of insight beyond basic physical descriptions. Which would be boring. So, uh, Fennar gets the honor. I almost wrote "no violence today", but that would be a lie. Anyway. No physical violence today. XD

I am not going to offer any further commentary, except, if you ever encounter this personality type in real life, I hope you know to RUN in the opposite direction, unless you know for sure he's a friend. He's fun to write, though. LOL

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We like fight scenes, don't we?

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:33:49 GMT

Mirror Curse (1803 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Fantasy, Fight Scene, Swordfighting
Summary:

Mirror curses are complicated. Dorion handles the technical part. Cue combat.

Only a few very short comments about the fighting, though I will answer questions if necessary.

( Behind a cut because of, um, violent topic. By necessity. )

Anyway. So, uh, that was a weird writing experience. I have no idea where this story/world/mess is going. (Yes, yes, this is clearly romantic comedy... XD I mean, I could.)

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