The calendar promises summer will arrive soon. Long, warm evenings. It never really gets dark here in Sweden. I’m looking forward to it. 🙂
Summer evening in the archipelago : 36 x 25 cm
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The evening light of summer
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The sailing season begins soon.
Yeap, they say, paint what you love. I’m really looking forward to the summer season. I want to camp and sail. To paint plein air from morning till night. To be in the archipelago. To enjoy the constant light.
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Practising my clouds
All I want to do right now, is paint and improve.
Earlier in the week, I painted this watercolour. It’s an exercise more than a finished piece of art. I just wanted to practice my clouds. The sea, I wanted to practice that too, the sea is so hard to master.
I need to improve my compositional skills as well. Placing an island dead centre is not a good idea. So when I’ve mastered the clouds and the sea, I’ll start trying to improve my compositions. That will keep me busy for a while.
You can only laugh. I was just putting the last touch to the painting when I lost control of my brush. It jumped up in the air, spinning like a circus knife in front of my eyes. It hit the page, sable first. Splat!
I had just loaded the brush with Vandyke Brown moments before. The glimmering sea had lost its shine. Now there was a dark brown whale in my watercolour.
Later, I painted over the crime scene with opaque white. The sea sparkled again. It would never be perfect, but it’s finished.
The Coast Road, Malahide, Ireland 33 x 23 cm
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The Stockholm Archipelago
This is one of my first studio paintings since 2019. Kinda had to believe, but it’s true. My seasonal depression has prevented me until now. I painted last week and I added a few more islands to it yesterday. I’m happy with it. So nice to be painting during the winter months again. 🙂
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New addition in the studio
Now that I’ve started painting in the studio again I treated myself to a new palette 😀
It’s from Korea, Mijello : 24 Well Plastic Palette with Airtight Lid.
Last week I painted three watercolours. Initially, I was really happy with all of them but after a while I gradually changed my mind.
I had just finished reading a lovely book about Edward Seago by James Russell. Seago was an excellent English watercolour artist that was very successful in his lifetime but was disliked by the critics. “He painted picture-postcards” a critic once said.
He was a landscape painter, he painted the countryside around him. A typical watercolour would be of a summer-blue sky, rolling hills and shadows dancing on the fields while animals grazed. He liked sailing boats too so you can understand that he inspires me a lot. His watercolours were very pleasing to the eye.
So this is the question, should I worry about my watercolours looking like picture-postcards? Maybe I should paint more watercolours like the one featured here. I painted it to counteract the three pretty watercolours. It’s of Poolbeg Power Station in Dublin Bay, Ireland. A quick sketch (30mins) 28x18cm.
Your thoughts please. 🙂
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A memory from Mexico
The forest was way too complex for me to paint. I had to simplify the subject and I tried to capture the feeling instead. Fun, fun, fun.
My pencil sketches from last year and the year before.
New video 
My previous sketchbook video seems to be quite popular on my YouTube channel so here is the next one. I use these small sketchbooks because they are easy to always have in a pocket or shoulder bag. I like the texture of the paper, it’s called, Hand Book Journal.Co and it’s distributed by Speedball Art Products, Statesville, NC. It’s made in India. Here is a link to their website: https://www.speedballart.com/our-product-lines/paper/artist-journals-sketchbooks/travelogue-journals/
