Nina Johansson

In periods of less time for drawing, I like to do these “week drawings”. This one lasted for almost three weeks , but I usually try to fill a page in one. It feels good to know I have an ongoing drawing that I can just keep working on anytime, without pressure to finish anything, and without sticking to a certain subject. And after a week or so, I try to tie the whole thing together with colour or crosshatching or something. Quite fun, and a good feeling to at least draw a little, even if I don´t have much time.

16 x 19 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

The life drawing sessions I often go to started again yesterday, after a holiday hiatus. They take place in a little 1930´s cinema theater near where I live, and even though it´s not perfect to sit in a cinema chair to draw (I usually stand up), and the lighting is less than great, it´s never crowded and the atmosphere is always nice.

This is a ten minute pose that I think turned out ok. I used watersoluble pencil and a waterbrush, which worked really well to get a little bit of shading in a short time.

About 24 x 10 cm, watersoluble pencil and waterbrush on cartridge paper.

This is my mother. She´s the best and wisest mum anyone could wish for, and today is her 70th birthday!

The making of this little booklet for her (above is the front and one of the images inside) is the reason for the lack of posts here lately. My right hand is seriously itching for some proper drawing now, so I´ll be back with some drawing posts soon!

15 x 21,5 cm, Copic airbrush system and many many handcut stencils on Saunders Waterford watercolour paper.

We drove 700 kilometers today, through a cold and snow-covered Sweden. I grabbed the opportunity to do some sketching in the car, since I was not the one driving at the moment.

15 x 8 cm, pencil on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

Happy holidays! I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas!

8 x 9 cm, Uniball eye pen and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

Before all the Christmas joy begins, I want to tell you how things went with Aspudden public bath, that I have posted about before. (If you missed the earlier posts, they can be found here, here and here.)

The struggle to save the bath continued outside the building after the police ended the occupation. People demonstrated, formed a Bath group to raise money, held meetings, went to Municipal government meetings trying to talk to politicians – you name it, they did it. The bath and the demonstrations around it have been mentioned in both local and national newspapers and TV news, but to no avail. The politicians would not listen, and the demolition started from inside the bath, with police guarding the outside.

On the night between Dec 9 and 10, the demonstrations to save the bath were called off. The cars parked in the middle of the street outside, to prevent the excavators from reaching the bath, were moved. At midnight a large number of people from Aspudden (including myself) marched past the police guards to lay down roses in front of the bath. A very sad moment, and many of us had tears in our eyes. A few days later the last walls of the building were torn down, and now the site is just a pile of dust and snow.

I don´t often post photos, but I just happened to photograph the bath sign on the 24th of November – which turned out to be the last night the sign was lit. I´m posting it as a little tribute to a bath that was in use the whole time from 1919 to a few months ago.

Big cities can seem so anonymous sometimes, and the people living there a bit jaded, and you often get a feeling that no one really cares what happens around them. But in this case both old and young – ordinary people! – stood up for their beliefs. In the process, a lot of people got to know each other and I know Aspudden is a few degrees warmer now, in spite of the snow. I am so proud to live in a community where people care about their surroundings and are ready to give their time and efforts to try to change things for the better.

15 x 13,5 cm, ink on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

Found a new toy today in a store, a water soluble pencil. I think I actually had one of those once, but I never really used it. I bought two, a 2B and a 4B, and played around a bit. I like the way the water smoothes out the graphite without rubbing out the lines completely. You can keep working on top of the washed surfaces with more graphite, getting much darker traces.

For those of you living in countries where poinsettia is more like a bush or a tree – in Sweden we buy them in December, in a pot, and every Swede get all Christmassy inside when these turn up in windows everywhere. People don´t usually keep them longer than a few weeks or until the red has disappeared – poinsettias do not fancy our climate, so the red leaves don´t come back.

17 x 18 cm, Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth “GIOCONDA” Aquarelle pencils and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

I ran some errands in town this afternoon, and took a break in a café at Odengatan, where this girl was studying (”plugga” in Swedish) something very intensely.

I couldn´t help but trying to capture her on paper, it is so rare with people who sit still when you try to draw them!

Some news here on the blog: I have been trying to figure out how to get threaded comments to work, so I can answer the questions I get in the comment section in a neat way, and it seems I´ve solved it! So if you pose questions to me, please don´t forget to check back for an answer!

7 x 11 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (part of a sketchbook page).

A text message and a massive explosion of fireworks outside our kitchen window woke me up at 06.00 this morning. The police was down at the old public bath here in Aspudden, and the action group trying to save the bath from destruction wanted everyone´s attention. A little crowd of people gathered outside the bath when the police ended the 59 days of occupation. They emptied the building, sealed all windows and doors with sheet metal, and put up a fence around it. And just to make sure no one would try to save the house again, they pointed a flood light at it, and placed two guards outside.

What a waste of people´s efforts in trying to make their community a better place, and what a waste of historical value – the bath has been around since 1919! The responsible politician has never set her foot in this place, even though this matter has been discussed for almost two years now. I suppose travelling six kilometers from City hall is too much to ask to have a meaningful dialogue with the people you represent.

This has been in the national television news today, and in the morning papers. If nothing else, I hope this opens the eyes (ears!) of politicians who forgot to listen to ordinary people.

I wrote and drew about this before, here and here (and the same drawings were also posted at Urban Sketchers).

Oh, and if you want to see some actual photos of this place, check out excellent news photographer Lars Epstein´s blog posts about this subject, he has covered it over a period of time:
Nov 25 (evening)
Nov 25 (day)
Nov 21 (Aspudden public bath festival)
Nov 13 (oppositional politicians show their support)
Nov 8 (art barricade)
Sept 29 (the bath is occupied)
Sept 4 (about decision to tear down the bath)

Top drawing: 16 x 17 cm, Uniball eye pen and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper
Black and white drawing: 14 x 9 cm, Uniball eye pen and Copic marker on same paper.

I finally filled the last spread in my old sketchbook. The one with the crappy paper. The one I never really liked (sorry, little book). I´m glad I worked my way throught it, though. A finished sketchbook always gives you a certain feeling of accomplishment.

So, on to new adventures with a new book that has been waiting for me for a while! It is (was) an old book about russian souvenirs, written in French, that I slaughtered and filled with new pristine pages of Fabriano Artistico hot press paper. I´m looking forward to both the size of the book (it´s slightly bigger than the last one), and working on better quality paper.

I´m thinking about using a smaller book too, on the side, since Souvenirs Russes might be a bit on the heavy side in some situations. I just have to decide on which of the smaller books I should go for… Hard decision. But a rather pleasant problem.

26,5 x 17 cm, Lamy Safaris with Noodler´s Lexington Grey and Polar Black ink and watercolours on sketchbook spread.