meldrum art
Have you ever been to Ploumanach? Giant pink granite boulders by the sea that make people look very small. Nature is king indeed.
Saunders Waterford fine grain sketchbook 300g 19 x 28 cm.
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Last week, my wife and two artist friends Lars and Inger travelled to Paimpol in Brittany. It was a long trip, 11 hours in total. To pass the time I painted a watercolour looking out of the train window between Paris and Rennes. The wheat fields outside Paris remind me of the Stockholm archipelago – there are islands of trees as far as the eye can see, there is no water but a sea of wheat.
Saunders Waterford fine grain sketchbook 300g 19 x 28 cm.
Click image below for full-size image.
I met up with some friends yesterday at Kungsträdgården and painted this sketch of people enjoying a coffee at Tehuset, a café in the park. It was a beautiful afternoon and we had a long chat afterwards, we talked about techniques, our ambitions and what plans we had for the summer, a lovely day.
My sketch was painted on Arches Rough, 31 x 23cm. I will return and paint this scene again. I feel I went too dark, I like contrast but I went too far. – But yes, it’s just a sketch.
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I’ve been busy doing other things than art recently like watching my son graduate and helping him move back to Stockholm after 3 years in Karlskrona. I’m working this week but yesterday was Sweden’s national day so I had the day off which meant I could watercolour! 🙂
I hadn’t painted for a week so in order to get going I painted this sketch of Stockholm’s town hall called “Stadshuset” in Swedish. I think it’s a very beautiful building so I have sketched many times and I probably will continue to do so in the future.
While I was painting yesterday, I filmed it using a GoPro camera. I bought one secondhand last year and have found it hard to start filming with it. I think it is like everything that requires some learning, the first step is the hardest. But now I have taken that first important step and I have ambitions to publish short films of myself while I paint watercolours. I am currently studying how to edit using Premiere Pro, so much to learn; one step at a time David, one step at a time.
The sketch was painted in a Moleskin watercolour journal. The paper quality sucks but if forces me to adapt which isn’t a bad thing.
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I don’t always achieve it but I do try to do a watercolour sketch everyday. This was painted late one night last week in my Moleskin watercolour journal. The paper is inferior compared to Arches but it forces me to experiment which I like. The great thing about sketches is that you can be free to play around, no pressure compared to an exhibition piece.
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I met up with my fellow Urban Sketchers yesterday, we meet on the last Sunday of every month. It was a beautiful warm summer’s day, 25 degrees in the shade – a rare event at this time of the year here in Stockholm. We met outside Sven Harry’s Art Museum in Vasaparken, close to St Eriksplan in Stockholm. I first did a watercolour sketch of the people sunbathing in the park, this was on Arches rough and later I painted Sven Harry’s Art Museum. If you are in Stockholm I can totally recommend to visit the museum right now as they have a great Anders Zorn exhibition on.
I am happy with my sketches, I was able to simplify the compositions to make them interesting to the eye. This is such a hard skill to master, do not try to draw everything and don’t be afraid to move objects around on the page to improve the composition. I have not mastered this skill yet, one has to practice it over and over again until it becomes instinctive. Each sketch took about an hour to paint. Sunbathers was painted on Arches rough and the museum was painted on Saunders fine.
I visited my mother last week to celebrate her birthday and spend a few days with my sister too. Visiting Northern Ireland is always a little strange for me as I grew up south of the border so visiting my mother is not the same as coming home. Actually, where is home? I have lived in Sweden for 27 years so Stockholm is I guess. Ireland is where I come from and Northern Ireland is where my mother and sister lives. France is where my parents in law live and my oldest son lives in Japan. Between the age of 21 and 26 I lived in London. With this kind of background it is impossible to be a nationalist, I’m very happy to be a person who has to travel the world to meet his family. It saddens me that countries want to close their borders, what is the benefit of such a thing?
The watercolour and pencil sketch were done when I had two hours to myself during my visit, I drove to Donaghadee which is one of my favourite places that is close to my mother’s home. The pencil sketch is on A5 paper and the watercolour is painted on Arches and is A4ish in size.
Today I studied Sergey Temerev’s cloud painting techniques on YouTube. I also did a sketch of a painting that I will start in the morning. Painting in a Moleskin sketchbook is difficult when you are used to good quality paper like Arches, but it’s a sketchbook which means I am not too concerned. The most important thing is to play and experiment with composition and pigment.
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Two weeks ago I was asked by Björn Bernström, chairman of the Nordic Akvarellskällskapet ( Nordic Watercolour Society) to participate in the International ECWS exhibition in Salamanca, Spain in September. I was of course trilled to be offered a chance to represent the society along with 5 other artists from Sweden.
There was only one catch, the watercolour had to be 70 x 50cm in size and it had to be delivered directly after the weekend. I didn’t have one at home but I was lucky, the weekend was a long one. I spent three days with just a little pressure on me to produce the painting. I’m happy with the result considering the time frame and I am very happy to have been chosen for the exhibition.
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