Nina Johansson

Just a thought: wouldn´t it be nice to see the Moleskine Watercolour Notebook in portrait format? Picture it before you, opening a portrait format Watercolour Notebook and having that almost square shaped spread to work on! Quite nice, huh? Because, honestly, the existing ones have a rather hopeless extreme landscape format, that many of us just don´t find very useful.

So, as an experiment, I created a Facebook group (my first, and probably last) to see if it´s possible to have some influence on what Moleskine decide to put out on the market. But to have any effect at all, a group needs members, right? Therefore, if you feel the same about this, follow the link below to join the group! And don´t play it safe by just hitting “Like”, JOIN!

We would love to see a Moleskine Watercolor Notebook in PORTRAIT format

These are two details from a big painting I was working on this weekend. Working big in watercolours  is so frustrating, but oh so fun when you get near the finish of a painting. The feeling of accomplishment is huge. : )

I still have a few details to work out on this one, before it is good to go to the exhibition in July.

Had another perfect day on my bike today, in absolutely fantastic summer weather in Stockholm. And a sketchbook, a pen and some watercolours in my backpack. : )

I know, I was a bit distracted while writing the name of the church, it´s called Maria kyrka, or Maria Magdalena, not Mariakyrkan. But what do you do when you´ve written it in waterproof ink? : )

16,5 x 18,5 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

I biked through town this afternoon, and sat down for a while with a coffee to draw a little. The weather has been absolutely fantastic in Stockholm lately, summer is here!

14 x 14 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink and watercolours on Plano 200 gsm drawing paper.

Finally a drawing! My hands and mind have been itching to draw for quite a while. All this painting business lately has severely limited my drawing time, and the sketchbook is screaming for attention. Spending some time in a café with a friend was the perfect pastime this rainy day, and it also gave me the chance to finally sit down and draw somewhere away from home. Oh joy! : )

15 x 18 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington Grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

I like to limit the number of colours I use in a painting, but while working with my paintings for the exhibition this summer, I have realised that I tend to get stuck in certain colour combinations that I know work well. It feels like I´m playing it safe, and I need to get out of that comfort zone to create something new and fresh.

I´ve been trying to find ways to force myself to work with new colour schemes, and one day I was thinking I should have had some kind of lottery tickets or dice to randomly decide what colours to use – and there the idea for these little “colour dice” was born!

I made a template in Illustrator, cut it out in cardboard, traced a number of them on watercolour paper, cut them out and painted them. When they were dry I glued them together, and started rolling the dice! I just roll them all together and see if something nice lands on the table in front of me. It´s turned out to be a great way to find new and surprising colour combinations.

These first ten dice are a great start, but I want more, so I´m making another batch now, with both single and mixed colours.

Wanna make some? Download the template pdf below (right-click, save link as), draw/trace it on watercolour paper, cut out, colour it, and glue!

Colour cube template

Finally just a drawing! Another kitchen window view – I don´t know how many I´ve drawn so far, but quite a few. It´s hard to grow tired of it, since the view changes so much with the light and the weather.

15,5 x 18,5 cm, some Muji store light blue gel pen and watercolours, on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

Just thought I´d show the use of the pattern in my last post. Without the tape, too. : )

I´m having a week off right now, Easter holidays, and I´m using every day to paint for the exhibition in July. Today I finished the largest watercolour painting I have ever done, 1.40 meters wide (approx. 55”). The image above is a detail from the work in progress, with some tape still on it.

It´s been a really interesting experience to work this big. 80 percent of the time I worked with this painting I spent doubting that it would ever become a good one. Watercolours are slow to work with, and always dry lighter than when you put them down on paper, so the painting constantly looked too pale until the very finishing touches. Then, suddenly, it came alive, the contrasts were there, as I wanted them, and I feel quite happy with it.

I work a lot with patterns in my paintings. I love constructing repeating patterns, cut them out as stencils (well, the cutting part isn´t that fun, but it´s necessary) and use them in every way possible. I cut this little rhomb shaped flower yesterday, and used it in a painting today.

Edit: the piece is 55”, not 55′ as I had first written. How am I supposed to know how many little apostrophes you need to say “inches” in Am. English? Why don´t you guys just adopt the metric system, like everybody else? ; )

I am painting my way towards an exhibition this summer. I am going to exhibit at Norrbyskär´s museum, a small but interesting  museum outside Umeå (my old hometown up north) with an incredibly beautiful gallery. I have been wanting to exhibit there for years, so I am really looking forward to this.

I always have a lot of painting ideas in my head, and right now they all evolve around watercolours, so this will be a pure watercolour show. I will not post whole paintings here on the blog before the exhibition, but I intend to show some of the working progress and some painting details every now and then.

Various formats (details), watercolours on Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm watercolour paper, rough grain.