Nina Johansson

I have long been thinking about sketching some old cars around Midsommarkransen, since there are quite a few veteran enthusiasts around here. But you know how it is, I hurry by them on my way to and from work, and never seem to find the time to stop and sketch.

This evening, however, sunny and a bit windy and with not much else to do, I walked down to this Saab V4 that I have been keeping an eye on for a while. Kids were playing in the park nearby, birds singing, and not much traffic around. I had a perfect hour of calm, disturbed by nothing and noone (except a tiny dog that barked at me when walking by).

27 x 21 cm, Duke fude nib pen with Platinum Carbon ink, and watercolours, in Stillman & Birn Alpha Series sketchbook.

SagradaFamilia from Climax Amish on Vimeo.

A little video we did when I was in Barcelona drawing for the book, Drawing around Sagrada Família.

I met with some friends at Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet (Museum of Natural History) today, to spend a day sketching. Still too cold outside, spring is playing hide-and-seek this year.

It is fascinating with all the animals, bugs, skeletons and whatnot in this museum, and for someone who does not draw animals very often, it is very good practice to sketch in here. I found a department today that I never visited before – the Polar area. Turned out polar bears are harder to draw than… CARS, even. I tried five times, but my bears look either like cuddly teddy bears, cougars or dogs…

All drawings: 13 x 13 cm, Namiki Falcon with Platinum Carbon ink or Staedtler fineliner, and watercolours in HandBook sketchbook.

A sketch from back in February. Sitting in one of Stockholm´s classical cafés, Ritorno, drawing and enjoying the cozy atmosphere of old furniture, stained carpets, dirty walls and good coffee. And I hope they never renovate this place, it would ruin the whole experience.

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.

We celebrated the new year near Sunne this time, a community in the landscape Värmland in western Sweden. I drove into “town” (not sure you can actually call this a town… but yeah, sort of) to sketch on New Year´s eve, but the rain started pouring down, so I had to sit in the car. I always find it awkward to draw in the car. Even if you move the seat back it is still a very confined space to flip open your sketchbook in, and spread out your favorite drawing tools. There is always something in the way, steering wheel, door handles, gear lever… Drives me nuts. Plus, I had to run the wipers every minute to even see out the windshield. But at least I got some drawing done. : )

27,5 x 14 cm, Namiki Falcon with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours, on HandBook sketchbook spread.

Christmas has been nice and cozy, though there wasn´t much time for drawing. But as always around holidays, I kind of ease into a nice peace of mind after the festivities, and the urge to draw comes back.

Stockholm was a bit too windy today to offer any outdoors sketching possibilities, it´s been about -4°C, but I managed to find a nice view of Sveavägen from inside a photo gallery in Kulturhuset. Someone had been nice enough to leave a chair just where I needed it, right by the window. : )

And with that little twinkling star in the window (look closely!), I wish you a very Happy New Year!

24 x 13 cm, Namiki Falcon with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours in HandBook sketchbook.

Today was one of those rare moments when I got a chance to draw at work – simply because I wasn´t the one babbling in front of the class, for once. We brought a class to one of the universities of Stockholm, where university students told them about their educations and student life in general. We want to give our classes an idea of where they might be heading with their studies.

It´s just a quick sketch, done in about 15 minutes (except I added the colours afterwards, I refilled my watercolour box yesterday and left it at home to dry). Trying out a new pen here too, a Duke fountain pen with a calligraphy nib (I think it´s called a “fude” nib). It is very different from what I´m used to drawing with, but gives a very interesting line width variation. I´ll try to post an image of it when I find a spot with decent lighting for taking a photo  (harder than you´d think in Sweden in November…).

13 x 13 cm, Duke fountain pen with Platinum carbon ink and watercolour on HandBook page.

We now have a small sketching group in Stockholm, and we try to meet up the last Sunday of every month to do some sketching together. (Let me know if you are interested in joining us!) Last time, someone suggested we should go to IKEA to draw some time, which sounded like a crazy enough idea the month before Christmas, so today we did. Well, two of us did – unfortunately the rest were busy with other things today. Check out my fellow sketcher David Meldrum´s site!

IKEA turned out to be a blast to draw in (plus they have cafés all over the place). Lots of perspective going on, with layers of columns, signs and people everywhere, and textiles hanging down like foldable walls from the ceiling. Everything in there lets you work with scale and depth in your sketches, which is tricky but fun.

Of course I made use of the free art supplies in there – the little short pencils they hand out to take notes turned out to be great for sketching values (though it didn´t make any really dark shades).

26 x 13 cm, top sketch: Namiki Falcon with Platinum Carbon black ink and IKEA note pencil in HandBook sketchbook, bottom sketch: Duke fountain pen with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours in HandBook sketchbook.

Oh how I love it when November shows a pretty face when I happen to have a day off! Using my free Monday to sketch the corner Blecktornsgränd/Tavastgatan at Södermalm. And of course I visited Stockholm´s probably best pen store, Pen Store (in fact), right there on the corner.

13 x 13 cm, Namiki Falcon with Platinum Carbon black ink and watercolours, in HandBook sketchbook.