I am happy to announce that I've found a really god male nude model for croquis next Saturday. I really hope people arent too shy for this in my small town. Nude model drawing give you so much; you get so much faster at sketching, it is challenging but very rewarding at the same time.

If you want to participate, write a comment down here or use the contact form and I will give you the details. You won't regret it :)

Gosh it is tricky to stretch a big canvas by yourself, so I called for some professional extra hands! One person is holding the frame, the second person is pulling the fabric with pliers and I am stapling with a staple gun. It is good to have handy men in the family :)

I know, the resolution sucks, but I thought it would be more interesting to see blurry cellphone pics than no pics at all.

This canvas is 100*73 cm. I want to go BIGGER (this is a step on the way) because I think larger paintings can set the tone for an entire room. How do you think when choosing the size of a painting/photo for your home?

Thank you so much for the help Robert and Tord, I couldn't have done it without you!

A way to get things done is to write them down and to share them with everyone else. It puts a little more pressure on you when you have made your plans and to-do-lists official.

I talked about the objectives for 2014 with a friend earlier today. Normally I don't give New Years resolutions but for the reasons mentioned above I will this year. If you don't take chances you will never succeed, and if you don't give up you never really fail.

These are my main goals:

• Participate in three exhibitions, group exhibitions are fine (two before August and at least one in autumn)
• Photograph my paintings and make prints/lithographs (deadline for the first one is the end of January)
• Develop this homepage and other social media further (ongoing)
• Get to know other painters/artists - I barely know anyone with the same interest!

I think these goals are within reach but it will definitlt keep me occupied.

Then if I would dream a little (a lot) bigger I would put things on my list like:

• Meet Eloy Morales and Alyssa Monks and to see their work in reality

• To paint a book cover for Jostein Gaarder or Paulo Coelho

...but we can forget about that for now ;)

Not all processes look the same. I had imagined another type of background for this one but it didn't turn out as I'd hoped. Therefore the face appeared before the background. Normally I do the background first or I work with the whole painting at he same time.

First layer:

Second layer, face:

Background:

The ice-cream got a really heavy layer of paint, which took a long time to dry:

I named the painting Cheat Day because it is a very current expression on workout pages and Instagram. I'll write another post later giving my opinion about this trend.

I still have some minor corrections I want to do. It is a classical issue, when are you really done with a painting? At the Lars Lerin museum in Karlstad we got told that they had to take away the paintings from him, otherwise he would just continue to repaint them.

I love painting faces and particularly noses for some reason. But sometimes I take a break from what I normally do and paint different motives using other techniques to see if I can develop as a painter.

Above: oil on panel

Above: Oil and wax on paper board

Above: acrylic on acrylic paper

Animals isn't really my thing. I saw a really good black and white animal painting some days ago and I have to remind myself NOT to paint furry things again (I'm struggling with some squirrels at the moment). Also, that painting was made in acrylic which is a medium I find hard to work with. All respect to that artist and to everyone else who master acrylic without making the paint look dead on the canvas!

The good thing though trying new techniques is that you learn what you like and don't like, and also what your strengths and weaknesses are. I'm definitely better at painting faces and children than other things, and I certainly enjoy oil the most.

Here are some of my art books. Everytime I go vintage shopping I look for old ones. Yesterday I bought "konstguide, epoker och ismer genom tiderna". My stepdad bought the book about Picasso second hand for me. I guess you ought to have one if you are from Kristinehamn since we have a Picasso sculpture here. Also, I think his art is interesting, I've seen both his museums in Malaga and Barcelona, as well as Guernica in Madrid.

The Lerin book I got as a Christmas present from my grandmother and I love love love what he does. His museum in Karlstad is one of the best I've seen (and I've seen a lot of expositions of really good artists, at least in Madrid).

Spanish Eloy Morales is another favorite. His hyper realist paintings are incredible. What you see below is a self portrait of the painter himself (not a pic).

Tonight I'm not painting any canvas but my face. Oil painting is one thing, makeup something else..The photo is from last year showcasing Make-up Store's winter collection, I would have needed that makeup artist now (or maybe I should just paint my face with oil, ever tried that?)

I’ve always had an issue with keeping things in order. The only way of getting around it is to have a really good sorting system, everything at its place. It makes such a difference, and it applies to everything from clothes, outlook and even my palette.


Starting the day it looks more or less like this:

Although, after a couple of hours it looks like this:

Organized chaos!

First layer done! In this one I've chosen a cross perspective. As Ive tried to illustrate, you can imagine two lines going from one corner to another. One line is made up by the child and the butterfly looking at each other. The direction of the other line is made up by the green space between the angle of the jaw/mouth/nose and the hand.

I'm not always thinking about perspectives though, sometimes I just go with my guts.

Another thing to think about is the coloring. I am not sure about what shade of green I'm finally going to use, and if I will keep the yellow dots. I'm looking for harmony between the colors. One way to think of it is in terms of opposite colors. Red opposed to green and blue to yellow. If the main color in a paintin is green, How many percent of the painting should be in red to create perfect harmony?

One example I like of a painting based on opposite colors is this one by Picasso.

I took this (bad) pic while visiting the Picasso museum in Barcelona some months ago. I wasn't really permitted to take photos, ooouups :) at least I didn't use the flash.

This morning I've been working on concepts for new paintings. I always have a lot of ideas about what kind of motives I want to paint, but most of the time I have to see how the objects in the painting look together before I draw it onto the canvas. I try different sizes, shapes and angles of the objects before I make my final decision.

Pablo Picasso when developing his version of Velazquez' Las Meninas made as many as 58 different paintings! I am not quite as ambitious as him though :)

This morning's session resulted in one concept that is canvas-worthy and I came up with the name for the painting months ago: "You asked about my color and you told me yours was blue" Starting on this one is going to be my Monday fun!