Nina Johansson

Two posts on the same day! Not a usual habit of mine, but I thought I´d post this fresh on the right day.

It´s the first of May today, and in Stockholm the International Worker´s day is celebrated with several street demonstrations organized by the political parties to the left. I took a bike ride through town, passing by three different demonstrations. It must be a logistic nightmare for the people who draw the maps for these marches – they all take place simultaneously, and they all want to be close to the city center. The whole town is like a huge street festival with orchestras, drums, red flags, demonstration signs and people shouting, singing, marching.

I sat on a little doorstep on Kungsgatan drawing this while the Social Democratic party marched by.

13 x 17 cm, Lamy Safari with Lexington gray ink and watercolours on sketchbook page.

The view out the window in the same café as in the last post.

10 x 15,5 cm, Copic Multiliner SP and watercolours on sketchbook page.

Thank you all so much for your comments on my three exhibited paintings, they are all very much appreciated! There is no way I will have time to answer each and every one of your comments, since they are so many, but please know that I have read them all and I am very grateful for your encouragement. Thank you.

The drawing is from Wayne´s coffee in my hometown Umeå in northern Sweden. I spent the Easter holidays there, and had a really good time visiting family and friends.

13 x 15,5 cm, Copic Multiliner SP and watercolours on sketchbook page.

The third and last of the paintings in the exhibition at Edsviks konsthall.

20 x 20 cm, watercolours on Arches 300 g watercolour paper.

This is the second painting from the exhibition (see the previous post). All the images are inspired by the island in Northern Sweden where I spend much of my summers, though they are not exact depictions of the place. I figured that if I choose a subject that I know well, I can concentrate on the watercolours and experiment around this theme.

20 x 20 cm, watercolours on Arches 300 g watercolour paper.

I wrote in an old post some time ago that I had made some small paintings that I didn´t want to show just yet, since I had some plans for them. I thought I´d tell you now that what I did was to send three of them into a juried watercolour exhibition, and they were all accepted! So now they are all up at the National Watercolour Salon at Edsviks Konsthall, just north of Stockholm. (I would put a link here, but their site seems to be down today for some reason.)

This is my first serious try to exhibit any of my work, so I´m thrilled that it all worked out. I´ll post the other two paintings in the next two days.

20 x 20 cm, watercolours on Arches 300 g watercolour paper.

Drawing a skeleton together with my students. I find the details intriguing, can´t believe that´s the way we all look inside…

13 x 17 cm, pencil on sketchbook page.

This time the Stockholm crowd (of three) decided to hit Arlanda Airport for our Sketchcrawl day. A big airport is great for drawing people and strange technical stuff, and we had a great day with lots of drawing challenges. And coffee.



(Curious about why we had a sketchcrawl on the 4th of April instead of the official 11th? Well, us Swedes celebrate Easter (and Christmas, and just about every other big holiday) on the Eve before the actual Day, and the 11th of April was the day when all Swedes went to their relatives to eat eggs. No one had time to go on a Sketchcrawl then, so we sneakily changed the date…)

13 x 18 cm, except the last drawing, 13 x 7 cm. Copic Multiliner SP on sketchbook pages.

Playing around with the crayons again. Thick crayons are more like painting than drawing, really. Fun and difficult. Used myself as a model in front of a mirror, though the beige image isn´t me at all… I think it´s hilarious the way I seem to have a horn in my forehead in the top drawing – it fits my angry frown.

13.x 17,5 cm, watercolour wash and Caran d´Ache Neocolor I crayons on sketchbook pages.

I forgot to post this – a bit of play with some new wax crayons. I´ve been wanting some real quality wax crayons for a while, and I finally invested in (or wasted money on, depends on how you look at it) a box of Caran d´Ache Neocolor I a few weeks ago. This drawing is me comparing the Neocolor crayons with the really old cheapo crayons I had before (cheapo on the left, Neocolor on the right).

The difference isn´t so much in the image as in my wrist. The left image was really hard work, the cheapos don´t really want to leave colour on the paper – probably because they´re mostly wax and not so much pigment – while the Neocolors just smeared on like butter. Wonderful!

17 x 13 cm, Faber Castell Smart crayons and Caran d´Ache Neocolor I crayons on sketchbook page.