Nina Johansson

Café Valand is one of my favorite cafés in Stockholm. The place was opened in 1954, and hasn´t changed since. Still the same owners. Entering is like going back in time. You can´t find a cappuccino in here, simply coffee or tea, with or without milk and sugar. Not a whole lot of cookies and cakes to choose from either, compared to other cafés, but everything is homebaked, with care. And the atmosphere comes for free.

17 x 17 cm, Namiki Falcon with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours on Arches Satinée 300 g watercolour paper.

A more elaborate drawing today – sat down outside Sko-Wera at Odengatan to draw their amazing neon sign and retro store front. The owners came out to see what I was doing as they were closing up for the day, and told me the sign is from the fifties. It´s been renovated, but it´s still the same sign. It is gorgeous when lit, with green neon.

18,5 x 17,5 cm, Namiki-Falcon with Platinum Carbon black and watercolours, on Arches Satinée 300 g watercolour paper.

At Kungsholmen in Stockholm, along the quay at Norr Mälarstrand, someone has taken to extreme gardening. Several willow trees along the water are slowly dying from poison injected into drilled holes in their trunks.

I know – my ears fell off too, when I heard it.

Now the whole city is whispering about the buildings facing the embankment, thinking that someone living there must have done it, to get a better view over the water. Apparently this is not the first time this has happened. I did a search on some Swedish newspapers’ websites, and people are killing trees here and there, both in Stockholm and other cities, just to better the view from their windows. The funny thing is, it always seems to happen very close to the really expensive apartments and villas. Some just can´t get enough…

I would not want to be the next person in one of these buildings trying to sell an apartment facing the water – oh, the suspicion and the gossip…

19,5 x 17 cm, Namiki-Falcon with Platinum Carbon black ink and watercolours on 300 g Arches Satinée watercolour paper.

I love old cars and buses, and this one has caught my eye for a very long time now. I pass by it on my way to work. It is parked in an industrial area not too far from where I live, and I have been thinking that I should go there to draw it some day. It only took me about two years to reach that ’some day’, but hey, better late than never, right?

Judging from the red front, this one is clearly an old specimen from Stockholm´s local traffic. Someone did a good job trying to add some glamour to it with some gold spray paint, but somehow they didn´t manage to buy enough paint to cover the whole bus… Still, the charm is intact, don´t you think?

17 x 11 cm, Snowman ink pen and watercolours on Plano 270 g drawing paper.

Inspired by all the panoramas drawn during the Urban Sketchers symposium in Lisbon, I climbed Skinnarviksberget (Skinnarvik mountain – the ‘climbing’ is not really as great an effort as it sounds, though, it´s more of a height or a hill than a mountain…)  in Stockholm last week to try a panorama myself.

I usually find vast views incredibly tedious to draw, but this time it was ok. It´s almost meditative to sit and watch things happen from above, without taking part, just hearing a soft hum from a city in vacation mode. I had to go there twice to finish this, the heat was overwhelming the first time. I expected Lisbon to be hot, but Stockholm has been worse this summer.

42 x 17 cm, Namiki-Falcon pen with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours on Arches Satinée 300 g watercolour paper.

I went sketching with Kim, Charlotte and Johanna today, at Tegnérlunden, a beautiful little park in the heart of Stockholm.

It´s a great place for sketching, you get all kinds of subjects here, from city street scenes to sunbathers on the grass. And as a bonus, a statue of Swedish author August Strindberg, flexing his muscles. How about that?

Top drawing: 19 x 16 cm, Namiki-Falcon with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours on Arches Satinée paper, the others are drawn in a 19 x 13 cm sketchbook filled with 240 g Plano drawing paper.

I went drawing at Slussen here in Stockholm today. I like drawing there, it´s always a busy place, full of people and traffic. It´s an inspiring mixture of old beautiful buildings and worn down ugly structures for the traffic and subway. Just the way I like it.

The Stomatol sign is Stockholm´s oldest ‘animated’ advertising sign, consisting of approximately 1350 light bulbs in different colours. It was first installed in 1909, and it´s still up there. Quite impressive, huh? It´s a landmark here in Stockholm, and it can´t be all that unknown to the world, since there is even an English Wikipedia page about it. : )

I was drawing a lot at Slussen last autumn, then it got too cold. It´s good to be back. See more of my Slussen drawings here.

18,5 x 23,5 cm, Pilot Namiki-Falcon with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours on Arches Satinée 300 g watercolour paper.

Waiting for a colleague to pick me up a few days ago, I had the chance to draw these guys setting up their fruit stand at the square in Skärholmen, a suburb south of Stockholm. The second page in a new sketchbook!

18 x 12 cm, Lamy Safari with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours, on Plano drawing paper.

I didn´t choose what to draw today, the temperature did it for me. Stockholm is glowing hot right now, about 30 degrees Celsius, which means our apartment is approximately two degrees cooler. Not so great. I decided to head out on the bike to get some drawing done, but the city was way too hot – and biking didn´t make it any cooler. Eventually, I found a nice spot with some shade in the park of the Johannes church, so that´s what I drew. It never before struck me how big this church is, I need to go back there and take a look inside.

14 x 14,5 cm, Lamy Safari with Platinum Carbon black ink and watercolours, on Schoellershammer drawing paper.

Sitting in the sun on the balcony, drawing some flowers in the summer heat.