Hibiscus experiment

Just a little hibiscus painting I made as an experiment with transfering an image with the grid method. Using the picture of a flower on my hibiscus tree. (It´s only 15x15 cm.) I did this picture in a few stages. Since I started out with a canvas that I had painted on before, it already had a darker background. And when painting the lines of the flower I did it with white paint to get the lights, so I kind of got a black and white underpainting. Then I put it away and let it dry for a month or so. Today I took it up again and started filling in the hues (Madder Lake Deep, Burnt Sienna) and the darks. Then I went into detail with the darks and lights, making it less flat and giving it more volume.

After that I painted over everything around the flower with a dark sepia paint and with the paint still wet I mixed in white and indigo to get some texture and light in the background as well. Now I hope this will dry in time for my grandmothers 80th birthday!

Here are some pictures of the process:

Memories from Louisiana

This is another painting I did the other the day. It was inspired by my last trip to New Orleans over new years to visit my boyfriend when he still lived over there. And when going so far south I´m always looking at the nature, the swamps and vegetation, the way the trees grow so differently than over here. But the one thing that I love the most: the Spanish Moss! It has a way of creating a certain atmosphere. Almost as if someone had decorated the trees with them.

One day we made a trip to a plantation house called Destrehan Plantation and it turned out to be the rainiest day with lots of thunder so we didn´t really go inside. Instead we took lots of pictures in the surrounding areas when the rain had stopped. I ended up finding a simple little wooden house with a gloomy yellow light shining over the panels of the wall, so I just had to take pictures of it. Since my camera isn´t all that good the pictures turned out dark and strange, but I just knew I had to keep them for future reference. So I´m thinking that I want to paint more of the spanish moss and Louisiana nature. We are going back in november so I´m really excited about gathering more material for painting!

Yesterday me and a friend went out on a little painting trip to Tyresta National Park, south of Stockholm. Since I haven´t really got all the gear to go plein-air painting with my oils I bought a new moleskin watercolor book and brought my aquarelles. It was such a strange feeling to paint in watercolors again! I´m so used to oil by now. But it was really good practice too, the way you have to be so sure of every brush stroke and how you can´t change anything afterwards.
I´m thinking that there are new things and techniques I can bring from oils to watercolors, and yet other things I can bring from watercolors to oils.
Didn´t really paint anything I feel like posting here though since I feel like I´m just getting started with that again. And my scanner is buried to deep under stuff anyways.

That´s all for now!

Indian Summer Sky

So this will be my very first blogpost here. I intend this to be the place where I first put up my new oilpaintings and other art before it shows up on my website. The website is in needs of a serious update since it mostly consists of drawings and watercolors from my late teenage years. So until then you will see it here.

Since last summer I´ve taken up the oilpainting again and I have been painting all summer as well as doing some renovating of the apartment. Still have a month left before I start my job as an intern at an architecture office here in Stockholm. It will be very exciting to see what the real work life is like and hopefully I will still be able to do some painting on the side!

This is my latest piece that I finished yesterday. I was inspired by the dryness and heat of the late months of summer, crickets singing in the sunburnt fields. At the moment I call it "Indian Summer Sky" after the colors used.

Indian Red
Indian Yellow
Greenish Umber
Raw Umber
Ivory Black
Titanium White

The paint isn´t really dry yet so when taking pictures there are a few strange reflections, so I will have to update the photo later!