Moose-camel

I haven´t posted on Urban sketchers for a while. I spent the summer setting up my first exhibition and the work it required put my drawing habit on hiatus for a while. (Check out the paintings from the exhibition here, if you are curious.) I´m back in the city now, though, back at work, and drawing is starting to feel very necessary again.

I have had the urge to draw this fantastic moose-camel for a long time, and finally got around to do it earlier today. This unreal fellow is standing in a roundabout in Midsommarkransen in Stockholm, quite near where I live. It looks like a plastic toy that accidentally got extremely enlarged and somehow got tossed out into reality. It makes a fantastic contrast to the offices, the school and the apartment buildings surrounding it.

I read about the artist who designed this sculpture, Linda Shamma Östrand, that she has a Swedish mother and a father from Palestine, so putting camel humps on a moose makes perfect sense to her. The sculpture obviously evokes feelings in people; when it was still new some mean villain stole it´s horns – probably made a great trophy on the hunter´s wall – and last winter someone knitted “hump-warmers” for it. I love it – it looks so calm and untouched by all the traffic and noise around it, and it always brings a smile to my face when I drive by.