Tag Archives: drawing

The (Late) Morning Star

It was a bit weird getting used to the very short days up near the Arctic Circle and waking up, breakfasted and out into our tour bus for a comfortable 9am start meant that we were stumbling around in pitch darkness. But it gave us a chance to see the sunrise every morning over theContinue reading “The (Late) Morning Star”

Hot And Cold In Iceland

  Iceland is full of geological wonders. In the freezing weather of late November, we welcomed a stop to explore geysirs and hot springs. The original Geysir, the origin of the name for all similar phenomenon, no longer blows, but a few yards away Strokkur blasts away every few minutes. The landscape is ethereally mistyContinue reading “Hot And Cold In Iceland”

East Meets West In The North

Iceland is a lump of lava up by the North Pole. The reason it’s there is because volcanoes keep erupting in the area because the North American tectonic plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate are pulling apart from each other. And this keeps setting off volcanoes. As the plates rip apart from each other, aContinue reading “East Meets West In The North”

Floyd On Ice

Travelling across Iceland with Olafur The Guide, Otto The Driver and a gaggle of, mostly, babyboomers, we went off-road in some giant jeeps up to the Gigjokull glacier. We’d had three days of deep snow, which was spectacular but unfortunately it meant that we weren’t able to see any Aurorae because of the heavy cloudContinue reading “Floyd On Ice”

Scribbling On A Glacier

ICELANDIC JOKE (courtesy of Olafur The Guide) Q. “What do you do if you’re lost in an Icelandic forest?” A. “Stand up.” I guess you had to be there. There are lots of  forests in Iceland made up of the Arctic Birch, Betula pubescens tortuosa, but because of the climate the trees are generally veryContinue reading “Scribbling On A Glacier”

Stacks And Giants

We spent a while on a wonderful beach of black sand covered with shiny dark, coin-shaped pebbles, fringed with towering silvery basalt columns, like the ones at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. I couldn’t resist scribbling and despite the snow, sketched some of the basalt with one of the Reynisdrangur sea stacks in theContinue reading “Stacks And Giants”

Freezing Mitts And Yellow Grass

As we travelled around Iceland, Husb and I noticed that the grass that thinly covers the black lava landscape is an unusual yellowy-orange colour. I think it might be Leymus Arenarius (Lyme grass) but I’m not sure. Before I went, I prepared different drawing media, including a 20cm square sketchbook of handmade Khadi paper. IContinue reading “Freezing Mitts And Yellow Grass”

Frozen Trolls And Black Sand

  Now that I’ve had a bit of sleep, I’ve been looking through the drawings I did in Iceland. I prefer to draw when I’m travelling because the memories are more vivid than when I’ve just taken photos. Olaf  The Guide and Otto The Driver (on a sabbatical from Springfield, obviously) took us to aContinue reading “Frozen Trolls And Black Sand”

Volcanos, Glaciers and Freezing Fingers

  I’ve been to Iceland! That’s the country, not the shop! It was amazing. I took sketchbooks, paper and card with me and loads of different drawing materials because I wasn’t sure what would work in that climate – my fingers as it turned out. It was freezing – 3 days of torrential snow taughtContinue reading “Volcanos, Glaciers and Freezing Fingers”