Nina Johansson

Fresh from Slussen, the sluice canal is in full use. There is always a curious little crowd watching the boats going in and out of the canal.

29,5 x 23 cm, Staedtler fineliner, PITT Artist big brush pens on Fabriano hot press watercolour paper.

Another scroll sketch. I went drawing at Slussen again today, and had decided to do a number of quick sketches like the two on the left, drawn in Gula gången (Yellow walkway, with yellow tiles on the walls). But after a coffee break I found this super sunny spot in the empty square outside Blå bodarna (Blue booths/stalls, and you guessed it – blue tiles on the walls), and I couldn´t persuade myself to do a quick sketch. I stayed on there for a while, basking in the sun, drawing away.

Inside Blå bodarna there used to be a number of small shops and stalls, among others a big stationery shop that was still there when I came to Stockholm in -98. Now there are two small shops and a hair dresser left, and the rest have been taken over by a nightclub or simply shut down. A half scary place at night, and a dark, worn down corridor in daytime, still retaining some of it´s oldschool cool.

50 x 13 cm, ink fineliners, pencil and coloured pencil in Moleskine Japanese album.

I went to Slussen to sketch today, and brought some tools I haven´t used in a long time – bamboo pen and ink, grey paper and a white Uni Poska pen. Actually I have never used the Posca pen, it was a quite nice acquaintance to make.

The weather was nice and sunny, but unfortunately the wind tipped my ink bottle over, so it made a mess in the beginning stages of the drawing. I tried to mop up most of the ink with a tissue, and kept on drawing. It was a lucky thing I had decided to work with black and white, the Posca pen managed to cover most of the ink blob, but it wasn´t a pretty sight at first…

48 x 25 cm, bamboo pen with Noodler´s Bulletproof Black ink and Uni Posca pen on grey drawing paper.

This weekend spring got serious in Stockholm. I sat down by the water at Slussen, jacket open, no mittens, sun in my face, listening to the humming sound of conversations from passers-by. Used pencil for shading, for once, and added a few highlights of white with a gel pen.

21,5 x 13 cm, PITT artist pen fineliner, pencil and gel pens in Moleskine Japanese album.

I have been drawing a panorama of Slussen in Stockholm lately. Sitting in Gamla stan (Old town) you can see the whole area across the water. (Scroll above to see the whole image.) Since it´s been so cold during March, I have had to draw this at four different occasions, sitting between 30-45 minutes each time. Then my fingers were deep frozen and I had to go defrost in a nearby café.

I find Slussen so incredibly intriguing to draw, with it´s complex structure and many functions. There is people and traffic everywhere, trains, buses, cars, bikes and pedestrians are all competing for space. In the many tunnels (both walkways and traffic tunnels) the light is often fascinating, and the perspective is sometimes a real challenge. Plus the whole place is getting quite dilapidated but now, tiles are falling off the walls, it´s dusty and dirty, but still in constant use. To me this all adds to the interest I have of drawing here.

If you haven´t been to Stockholm, just so you can get an idea of the complexity of this place, here is a link to an Open Street Map view of Slussen (sort of the Wikipedia of maps, © OpenStreetMaps contributors).

66,5 x 14 cm, Staedtler and UniPin fineliners and Pitt Artist Big Brush pens on Moleskine Japanese album sketchbook.

I sketch a lot, as often as I can find time for it, which means I have a lot of sketches and filled sketchbooks lying about. Mostly, that´s enough for me. The experience of making those sketches, and knowing that I have them in my sketchbooks generally makes my life a lot richer.

But sometimes I do use the sketches for continued work, and I thought I´d show an example. This above page, made with a carpenter´s pencil on very cheap paper at Slussen in Stockholm, was the start of my 2012 Christmas cards (top sketch) and a watercolour painting I finished today (bottom sketch).

I made the Christmas card by scanning the sketch, changing the pencil greyscale into three levels of grey in Photoshop, printed them out and cut stencils from them. Then I sprayed through the stencils with Copic airbrush, scanned the image, and sent it to a photo print shop to make cards.  (For you Photoshop afficionados out there, there are many ways to do this, and I know some people like Posterize – I don´t. I like the control that Threshold gives for this, making four different copies with different amounts of black, then put them all into layers in one image. I change the black of each layer into the shade of grey I want, then set the layer blending mode to multiply to see the result. I might tweak each layer a little, before printing them out on paper.)

The bottom sketch caught my attention yesterday when I flipped through some sketchbooks to find material for watercolour paintings. I put the sketch in front of me on the table where I paint, made a light pencil sketch before wetting the paper, and then started painting. I´m trying to flex my watercolour muscles to get in shape for an exhibition this summer, and since I have been sketching a lot around Slussen lately, I thought I´d use those sketches for some of the paintings. Don´t know if I have found my peak yet, but I´ll keep at it for a while and see where it all lands.

I started a Moleskine Japanese album today. I never liked these accordion-folded sketchbooks, and I don´t love the Moleskine paper either, but for working in and around Slussen with ink pens and PITT brush pens (which has the graceful property of not creeping through paper) it should be ok. I thought it would be cool to collect these drawings in a book that can be spread out and shown as a whole. An experiment. We´ll see how it goes.

18 x 14 cm, Staedtler black fineliner and PITT artist big brush pens in Moleskine Japanese album.

Yes, Slussen again today. Just a quick one, before heading home after some errands in town.

18,5 x 14 cm, PITT Artist big brush pens on folded sketchbook page (don´t know what paper).

I´m still at it, taking every chance of going sketching now that I have found some tools that work in low temperatures. Went drawing at Slussen again, like yesterday, but brought the Touch markers today. I also brought a foldable stool, it is so complicated to draw standing up, holding everything in my hands. Had to choose a higher stool than my favorite tiny one. Having the seat near ground level would be complicated now – I´m wearing so many layers of clothes, I feel like the Michelin man when I move around.

Approx. 21 x 19 cm, Touch markers on marker paper.

Yes, more drawing with mittens… With a more reasonable temperature today, 4°C, I brought some Neocolor crayons with me (not the watercolour kind), and did some sketching around Slussen in Stockholm. Higher temperature meant I could wear only knitted gloves on my right hand, giving me more control of my drawing tools. I kept the thick mitten on the left hand, which always gets cold holding the sketchbook.

Worn down concrete has it´s own kind of charm, and changing it´s colours makes it even more pretty. I love the play of light and shade around this place, especially if you go down beneath the surface where there are columns, tunnels and walls in every direction.

For this last sketch, I sat in a place that I think might be the dirtiest I have ever been sketching in, ever. My feet were in a puddle of mud, and water was dripping to my left from the highway above my head. The exhaust fumes from the road right next to me were intoxicating, to say the least. But what can you do, this was the best angle to capture this place.