Nina Johansson

I went to a life drawing session with two friends tonight, and it´s been a loooong time since I did this. Out of twenty drawings, one was decent enough to show. Will have to practice some more soon…

15 x 19 cm, pencil on copier paper

I am playing around with watercolours a lot these days, just trying things out, letting the colours and the water get really messy on the paper. I found this paper the other day, a very odd kind with a surface that reminds me of canvas, and I had to try it out. This is the result of about an hour of play with watercolours and various odd objects I found at work.

I started with the yellowish frame – I put some very wet colour onto an actual metal frame I found lying around at work, and then quickly (otherwise the colour will run off) threw it down on the paper. I leaned the paper a bit, letting the yellow run around inside the frame. Then I went on with printing some textures onto the paper with various materials (cellular plastic, wood boards, cardboard) and painting the rest. I like the surprising textures you get from printing with watercolours – it is of course impossible to control a print like that, and they always end up completely different than you expected.

This sketch gave me some ideas for several new paintings, so I´m going on experimenting…

16,5 x 25 cm, watercolours and pencil on some strange Hahnemüle watercolour paper.

I have been interviewed on Bill Turner´s new site The Tools Artists Use. As the name says, it is a site dedicated to the tools that creative folks use, and Bill interviews different artists about their habits and art gear. Check it out, put a bookmark there, and keep following his site in the future – it should be pretty interesting!

These are the last two sketchbook pages from Las Palmas, and they are not from Las Palmas at all. They are from a little village called Puerto de Mogán by the southeast coast of Gran Canaria. A very picturesque place, a tad too many tourists hanging around the harbour and beach, but otherwise a still alive fishing village, with incredible steep narrow alleys between the houses climbing up the mountainside.

This is the place where the most people came up to talk to me while I was drawing. Some Germans, one or two Frenchmen, an English couple, three young Canarian boys, a man from the Netherlands, and the waitress at the café where I drew this rose and sugar castor – they all came up and asked if they could see what I was doing (or simply looked over my shoulder) and commented on my work (all in very kind words) and talked for a little while. It´s like I´ve always said: drawing IS a contact sport. It´s even better than babies and dogs.

13 x 18,5 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Polar Black ink and watercolours on sketchbook pages.

Two more pages from Las Palmas, though the colored one below is from Playa del Curo on the south side of the island. We took a bus down there just to see what the tourist playas looked like, and we came to the conclusion that we made the right choice to go to Las Palmas. Playa del Ingles is just not my cup of tea…


13 x 18,5 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington Gray ink, and Copic multiliner and watercolours on sketchbook pages.

One quick and one slightly more elaborated sketchbook page from Las Palmas (actually the top line drawing is from a little town called Teror up in the mountains). The one below has already been up on Urban Sketchers, some of you may have seen it already.

I love the houses in Las Palmas, they are incredibly inspiring to draw. There are all kinds of buildings in this city; industrial sites, luxurious villas, huge apartment complexes and glossy store fronts, but the houses I like best are the ones with this worn look, with little shops or minimercados in them. They are somewhere between two and six storeys high, and full of signs of life – drying laundry, people going in and out, dogs walking by, someone shouting something from a window. The traffic in these streets is vivid, and there´s always something going on around the next corner.

13,5 x 18,5 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington gray ink and watercolours on sketchbook pages.

We´ve been on a week´s vacation to Las Palmas (Gran Canaria). LP a great place to be – not too many tourists, great weather (i.e. not too hot and never cold), lots to see and do and great environments to sketch in. The city is a bit dirty and worn, and full of interesting people. Just the way I like it when I´m drawing. I´ll be posting a few of my sketchbook pages during next week.

13,5 x 18,5 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington gray ink and watercolours on sketchbook pages.

I went to the Swedish Museum of National History with a friend thursday evening and made some sketches. I have drawn this first fella once before, but from another angle. I like him a lot, he´s got such a personality. I had a lot of fun, and I just know I´ll have to stop by this museum again some time, there´s about a billion things left in there that I didn´t have time to draw this time…

13 x 18 cm, drawing 1: Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington gray ink, drawing 2: Copic Multiliner SP, both on sketchbook pages.

Another little watercolour experiment. It´s great fun to do these tiny try-outs, they often end up completely different than I thought they would. That´s what is so great about watercolours – if you stop trying to control them, they will perform wonderful tricks for you!

The principle I had here was trying to get that paint onto the paper without necessarily using a brush. Try it – grab anything that you think could possibly move paint from your palette to the paper, and don´t give up too soon! This took me about two hours, where most of the time was spent waiting for paint layers to dry.

12 x 12 cm, watercolours on Arches 300 gsm watercolour paper (cold pressed, I think).

The reason I haven´t been posting so many drawings lately, is that I´ve been painting instead. I´m not posting the paintings I´ve done so far, I have a cunning plan for them and if it works out you´ll see them here later on. (If it doesn´t work out you´ll see them earlier…)

Meanwhile, I´m posting these experiments I did tonight. Sort of sketches or try-outs for bigger paintings. None of these are good enough for larger works, though, but they´re fun to make and I´m learning a lot as I go along.

12 x 12 cm, watercolours on Arches 300 gsm watercolour paper.