Placid Painting

When I first registered this site, my goal was to reach one follower.

If one person found what I was doing interesting, and wanted to tag along, it would alone make it worth keeping on publishing.

To reach 50 followers this week is therefore a fantastic milestone, and I want to thank everyone who is following this site for the support.

As a bonus, I’ve gotten to know (in an online version) a lot of great artists, and the joy of following so many talented people to get inspired by.

So, beeing in kind of a sentimental state, I’ve decided to take a look back at some of the pieces that have meant a lot to me. Here goes:

1. The first painting:

In the summer of 2015 I decided to get a hobby, as I didn’t feel like I used my free time doing anything productive.

I decided to try out painting, and drove to the mall to buy a starter set with some oil paint, a few brushes and a palette.

I got home, sat down, and just lost myself in the whole painting process. After several hours this were the result, and I remember being very pleased with it.

The reflections in the water and the trees in front were my favourite features. My interest in painting was spiked.

2. My first favourite

This is my fifth og sixth painting, I think, and the first one that I felt really proud of.

I painted the background using my fingers, a fan brush for the trees and a flat brush for the mountain.

Afterwards it felt like a real breakthrough in my painting, and I was on a high the rest of the day.

3. All the bumps

There’s been so many failed paintings over the years that I lost count of it a long time ago.

I would think that two out of three paintings has ended in the trash, which do not make me want to sum up how much money I’ve basically thrown out the window.

Often, when I get very disappointed I end up just smearing my unused paint over the canvas in pure frustration. Very mature, I know..

I’ve gotten better at it over the years, though. And looking back it has been a vital part of my learning experience.

4. Starting to draw

Starting out painting, I always went straight on putting paint on the canvas.

With time, I found out that it can be an advantage making a basic pencil drawing to work from.

Drawing, both with pencils, pens and markers, has taken an increasing part of my time doing hobbys, and I find it very rewarding.

Both when it comes to using drawings to paint from, or drawing something as a main medium.

These are some of my favourites.

5. A new breakthrough

In 2017 it felt like another breakthrough with my paintings, taking it to a new level.

I found that the landscape paintings bagan to look more real, and less and less of them (but still quite a few…) ended up in the bin.

It difinitely gave me a motivational boost to keep on going.

6. Starting out with watercolour

This is the medium I feel I have the least hang of, and the one I feel the greatest urge to get better at.

Since starting out a year ago I’ve basically drawn pen drawings, using watercolour practically in the same way as using markers.

In the future I want to get better at playing around with the colours and using different layers.

7. Going digital

Taking on digital drawing and painting has given me so much more time practicing on my techniques.

You can take the tablet with you on the bus, in the car, in the sofa in the evening or when you have some free time during the day, and just get right to it.

No need to pick up anything other than the drawing pen, and you can start and stop the session in just a second.

It’s not the same feeling as working with the physical mediums, but it sure is both fun and practical. And no mess at all!

8. Taking on acrylics

Acrylics is not a medium I’ve been spending a lot of time with, but I do like the qualities of a fast drying medium.

During my acrylics sessions I’ve taken a more abstract approach to the paintings, and it has therefore become my abstract painting medium.

I’ve just stacked up on some new paint tubes, and are looking forward to go ahead on some new attempts.

9. The road ahead

If anyone is still reading, thanks you for listening to all my rambling.

Having spent a lot of time during the last year trying out new mediums I think the road ahead will be very exciting.

I feel that I in a greater degree now can pick the mediums that suit my wants, and that is a very good feeling to have.

It has broaden my horizon quite a bit, learning a lot of new techniques. There still is a long way to go though, seeing all the great work people are doing out there.

I don’t know how far I’ll get myself, but I think the journey will be fun nonetheless!

 

 

I’ve been making a few attempts on some comics lately.

The drawings has been pretty decent, I think, but the jokes has felt a bit off.

Mostly because I’ve been drawing it all not knowing what jokes to crack at the end.

So I’ve basically ended up with a complete drawing every time, and then have to find some joke to suite them.

Anyway, I did an attempt to freshen up a few of them the other day.

Just trying to give them a bit more edge.

Some of them included a little twist on the drawings as well.

You can see the changes below. The old jokes to the left and the new ones to the right.

How do you think they turned out? Is there any improvement?

Another digital drawing is done.

This one took about eight and a half hours to finish, most of the time being used colouring.

To be honest the whole thing started out with me wanting to draw a car.

I’ve been practicing a lot on drawing them in my sketchbook, but this was an opportunity to really take some time and do it as best as I could.

 

Suddenly there was a pig sitting behind the wheel, soon expanding to both a cow and a giraffe.

So why not put a duck in front of it all, right?

To finish it off I wanted to get some kind of wordplay into it all.

I thought for a little while, and was about to put in the text “MisconDUCKt”. After putting in most of the letters I sadly found out that it wouldn’t fit right, though.

So I finally landed on the frase “Fowl play”. Enough to get a few smiles out, perhaps.

Anyway, if you want to see the whole drawing process from scratch you can watch a full time-lapse video from the session in the window below 🙂

So how did you like it?

Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts. I would love to hear them 🙂

This is a digital drawing I made a few days ago, using a special ink medium on my Ipad.

It startet out as a random doodle, really. But after seeing what I imagined was a face (the big, oval one), I decided to keep building on it.

It soon expanded to another grown person, and a small kid in the back.

I don’t know what they’re talking about, but I imagine it’s something important.

I’ve been reading a book about drawing techniques lately, and one of the assignments was to draw different types of trees.

I got very inspired, and decided this would be a day dedicated to tree drawing. Learning to do it as well as possible.

So I set to work. First by drawing quick sketches of trees, and then taking some more time adding details and shadows.

Here are three of the trees:

I thought the pen drawing turned out rather nice, so I wanted to have another go at a more comprehensive drawing with a micron pen and some promarkers.

I think it went well.

There’s something really relaxing about drawing up the branches, adding some green leafs on top. Almost like a trip to the garden 🙂

Anyway, this is how it looked:

I can definitely be a fan of dry humor, and often enjoy having a go at it myself.

This is one of my attempts.

The whole thing started with me wanting to draw a flamingo.

I’ve tried it before, but never felt like I’ve mastered it.

So I had a go at my tablet, and thought it ended up rather good.

The black background looked a bit boring, though. So I decided to freshen it up with some colourful letters.

I thought for a while about dry and cheesy word plays I could use, and ended up with the line “Don’t keep me wading”. It did put a little smile on my face to be honest 🙂

So, if you’re reading this, what do you think?

Does the flamingo work, or should it all be in stronger colours perhaps? Do you have another flamingo joke that could’ve been used? 🙂

This is the result of a very unplanned and unmotivated session.

I wanted to paint something, but didn’t know what and didn’t know how.

A recipe for a bad result, even though it can sometimes create a good outcome. It didn’t this time…

I had a canvas laying around that I spray painted black a while back. I thought it would look good if I created a strong contrast to it by adding some bright colour.

Since I had no plan going into it, the easiest way to get the job done was using a palette knife. So I started making out what I imagined was a mountain in red. I’ve made some mountains this way, which has turned out quite nice. It didn’t this time…

After about 15 minutes I was out of ideas and quite lost regarding what to do next. So I simply stopped, adding it to the collection of bad sessions.

This is how it looked:

Not good, but I wonder if anyone who’s reading this has any idea about how I could make something like this work?

Is it anything to it, or is it just not a good idea using a palette knife on a black canvas like this? I would love some thoughts on it 🙂

Just to be a bit adventurous, I decided to put the picture of the painting into photoshop and play around a bit with light and contrast.

I have to say that it did look a bit better getting the colours stronger, and a bit more fragmentet. And afterward the original painting just looked a lot more boring! 🙂