Ink portrait

I made this very simple and small portrait yesterday, ink on watercolour paper. It was made very quickly with just a few brushstrokes. Of course - I had failed with several attempts in advance - that´s just the name of the game. But then this person decided to appear on the paper. As usual, I had no photo references etc, so I never know who is "visiting".

My first juryed exhibition!

 A small break through for me - I have got one of my watercolour paintings accepted in a juryed internet exhibition - follow the link below:

http://utstallning.akvarellen.org/


This is the painting that is now part of the exhibition. Juhuu!

Dreamlike

Horizon

The latest weeks and months I have been searching for simplicity in my paintings. And believe it or not - it is a lot harder to achieve than you should imagine! At least for me. Only one in about 20 attempts is looking something in the direction of what I want in terms of composition and how the pigments dry.

Winter landscape

Cold

                                                              "Cold"


As most often, this painting too, 'happened'; no preliminary plan, sketch or object to look after. The only plan was the sky to be dramatic. And 'something' going on in the foreground. The 'something' was painted quickly and with a painting knife.

Dawn

Happy new year 2014

                                                        "Atlantic bridge"

By the west coast of Norway, there is every year a storm around new year's eve, we actually call it a new year storm. Winds and waves hit land, building and bridges. But the bridges between islands take the weather and continue to connect people to eachother.

Atlantic waves

A painting from earlier this autumn. It's not the view from my vindow, but on the other hand the view of my inner eye.

Atmospheric watercolour

This painting is highly inspired by the artist Morten Paulsen. He made a demonstration at the watercolour workshop I attended, where he showed us a tecnique to activily make use of the characteristic of pigments that make a line at the edges when they dry. So this painting is very similar to Morten Paulsens motives and style.

Tranquility

                                                                 
Long time since blogging, the reason is simply that I haven't had access to internet on my PC the latest months and I have been too lazy to do something about it. I have, meanwhile, been painting regularly during the latest weeks and months. I have also been attending another watercolour workshop at Gerlesborg, Sweden. This time with a Norwegian watercolour artist, Morten Paulsen. As a result, I have been painting a lot of nature scenes this fall.

Fantasy flower

I have painted this early in the mornings before I have to go to the office, one bit at a time through several days. I tend to spoil a painting if I rush to finnish it, and so I need a lot of time, most often many days, to work on a painting. I used an earlier drawing I have made for inspiration for the flower, but from there the painting developed itself, and for some reason the flower wanted to grow right out of a branch. So then it turned out like this. I might still work a little bit more on two of the petals at the right which need a little bit more contrast. The painting is relatively big, about 40x60 cm, painted on Arches 300g hot pressed paper.

Sunrise at the pier

Unfortunately, the photo doesn't show very well the nice effect of the sunlight around the cloud that actually makes this painting. At first, I was about to throw this one as I couldn' get the foreground interesting. So I just took a bigger brush and made a couple of bold strokes - and all of a sudden a pier and waves hitting the rocks appeared.

Thunderstorm

Thunderstorm, Arches 300 g, 17 x 26 cm

I am exploring watercolour wet in wet these days. I want to combine the softness achieved by wet-in wet tecniques with hard lines and undefined shapes to create contrast and tickle the imagniation of the viewer.

Arctic afternoon

Arctic afternoon, Arches 300 g, 22x33 cm

More winter landscapes. It comes from my choice of colours as I am more fond of the blue range of the colour scale than the green summer colours. I have used Arhces 300 g paper in the last postings. To learn more about the quality of Arches paper was an important lesson and experience at the workshop I attended.So now I use only Arches.

This painting is, as almost always, from my head and just "happening". I didn't plan any cottage in this painting, I was more occupied with creating a nice effect with the sky. But the painting needed something more, so I added a cottage and a flagpole to make a contrast against the background. I made it with a clever tip I learned at the workshop - by using masking tape: you put a little piece of tape on the painting, rub a line with the back of your painting brush or something similar upon the tape, and then rip it off - and you will get back the white of the paper. But  - it only work with paper such as Arches, otherwise, big pieces of paper may easily be ripped of.

Nordic winter watercolour

I made this painting when I came home from the workshop. I think I have loosened up quite a bit as a result of the workshop.

Summer by the nordic coast

Last week I attended a watercolour workshop by Bengt Jacobsson, a Swedish artist. It was such a pleasure, and I learned a lot during those four days. It was an introductory workshop for beginners, which was very valuable for me.

It took place at Gerlesborgsskolan by the Swedish coastline, as you may see in the painting.

You can read more about the Gerlesborgsskolan here www.gerlesborgsskolan.se , they offer a lot of watercolour courses during the whole year.

Here you can se the work of the artist and teacher Bengt Jacobson www.jacobssonart.se

A small artist

A simplified version of an oil painting by Tom Browning called "Budding artist".

Values and shapes in a painting

I would like to recommend a new book from my bookshelf. It is called "The simple secret to better painting" by Greg Albert. I find it very useful as it has some really good and simple tips of how to make good compositions and designs with regard to shapes, values, etc.

The book also has many examples of watercolour paintings. And I have again been doing the exercise of copying an other artist in this blog posting. This time it is the artist Jack Reid I have been copying (the painting was untitled). In the book by Greg Albert it is presented as an example of having interesting shapes in a painting. In addition, I think it also shows very well the importance of having a variety of values in order to make an appealing painting. For me it is very educational to copy others like this, and this has been an important reminder of the value of values in a painting!

Water colours!

A few days ago I made this colourful painting by looking after Frank Webbs watercolour painting called "Cascais".