Today I went for a hike to capture textures for my current Illustration Project. Check out my neighbourhood!

The sun was shining for the first time in a week and I knew I had to take the opportunity to go out for a hike. Needing some textures also motivated me to get outside, so I packed my Camera and got dressed with three layers of wool and headed out in the cold -9c.

About half an hour walk from my house is a hill called Bergstoppen. It has a great view over the city Gjøvik and the lake Mjøsa.

Right next to the hill there's a place called Eiktunet where the local Museum has gathered old wooden houses from around the area.

Many of the houses are from around the 17th century.

They have little info cards explaining their original location and date.

I love this area and hike through it quite often. It almost feels like walking in a fairy tale.

Here's a traditional fence of wood called Skigard (Roundpole Fence) deriving from Ski because the fences is made of wooden planches that are placed sideways, and like the old wooden skis.

If you're interested in reading more about this technique, you can check out this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundpole_fence

Anyway, I was supposed to look for textures, but they were hard to find, unless it was wooden textures I was looking for! Managed to find a few though, and I will see if they can work in my project.

After about an hour and a half I started to get cold and headed home. Here's the beginning of my street, it goes down to the right.

And here's my street, can almost not see the houses for the snow, but ours is down there somewhere to the left.

A cold but beautiful day, and I'm glad I had the chance to go out and enjoy it a little.

Thanks for reading!

:) Helen