I started playing with unnatural colours schemes in 2018 when I stopped aiming for traditional realism. It has since then developed into a theme symbolizing a feeling of existence being out of order waiting for the apocalypse. The motives often show my daughters in settings where the human behavior is modified by our culture of distancing us from other life.
How do we choose what we pick up and get influenced by in this huge flow of information and impressions? In my watercolour paintings during the first half of 2018 I see a flavour of national romanticism. Is it a response to the current political mood in Sweden of rising nationalism and callousness? It has not been possible to ignore when who is a proper swede and who is not is debated in a language reminiscent of the 1930’s. Continue reading
Landscapes are totally redesigned to our needs and still we feel out of place.
So many horrible incidences have happened in such a short time that one’s own ordinary everyday life feels surreal. Like a thin layer of varnish over chaos.
I brought a sketchpad and an ink pen with me to the beach. Back home I used the black and white sketches of my daughter digging in the sand to do a watercolour. But instead of blue I remembered a tube of chinese orange goauche I bought when I lived in Jordan almost 20 years ago. Then the sky and sea turned gradually more red. The white sand became dark and sticky mud. My daughter digging tirelessly unaware of the fires burning around her.
This is to remember Nice, Munich and Kabul. A failed coup in Turkey that might give Erdogan the hands he needs to pull the rug under the Turkish democracy. May we still all come out of this year with the capability of instilling hope in each other and not be swallowed by a tide of ugly nationalism and hatred.
One way to get my daughter to pose is just sitting accidentally opposite her when she is drawing or painting.
I wanted to paint a watercolour focusing in improving my use of contrast and reds for flesh tones. First I sketched in cadmium yellow to get the proportions. A flat brush is used for background and hair then adding strokes with a round brush in her hair.
I was not happy with my latest finished oil portrait except for the elbow. The face just didn’t have the same light and as a portrait it was bad, bad ,bad. I sometimes part the painting in four parts and check if there is something interesting for the eye in each part. It failed that test as well.
In my world adding orange will make most thing better. So I did just that and repainted the face as well and made her ear smaller.
