Nina Johansson

This is the last post of the Rome series, some drawings from a classical concert we went to at Parco della Musica on our last evening in Rome, and some stuff from the flight home. We had a great trip, Rome is a fantastic city and now I feel warmed up for some springtime drawing in Stockholm. : )

17 x 20 cm & 6,5 x 16 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook pages).

Sometimes the internet is fantastic, because it lets you connect with people you never would have met otherwise. In Rome, I had the opportunity to meet up with Barbara Bacci from the online EDM-group. We spent some time together and went out drawing in the ghetto, where Barbara found us this amazing spot with a lot of  interesting angles and textures. Now and then passers-by stopped and talked for a bit, which is always nice (and always makes me wish I knew some more languages). We drew until it started getting dark. It is going to take some time before I can do that again – Stockholm is still full of snow…

Check out Barbara´s sketch of the same subject here, and please don´t miss all her fantastic animal drawings!

Thank you Barbara for a great time, it was worth a million to meet you! : )

17 x 20 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

Rome offers an enormous amount of nice spots to draw, and no matter where you go you´ll find something inspiring. It would be perfectly possible to draw something in one spot, then just walk around the next corner to find your next subject, turn another corner to draw something new, and so on. It never ends.

Of course, with limited time, you have to choose. I liked the ghetto a lot, because of it´s sometimes very odd angles and rugged textures that seem to surprise you everywhere.

I sat down on a doorstep to draw this, a very narrow part of a house that really intrigued me. I just love the funny way this was built, with the tiny supports under every floor (click to see the image bigger if you can´t see them).  And who lives behind that striped curtain up there? It would be really interesting to see the interior of this building…

10 x 20 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (part of sketchbook page).

Another drawing from Rome. Top left is not my work, it´s a ticket to the old Fori Imperiali (don´t know if that´s grammatically correct, but you know the area I´m talking about). Goodlooking, though.

17 x 20 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

We went to Rome for a week to get a taste of spring. End of February is when you start craving spring in Stockholm, so Rome seemed like a perfect choice. We got some really warm and sunny days, and didn´t get any of the horrible storm over Europe. (Click the images for a larger view.)

My baggage got lost during the flight, though, and when I got it back after four days all my make-up (not that much, but still) and my Noodler´s Lexington Grey ink was gone. I can understand the ink, but I´m still wondering who took my old make-up…

17 x 20 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington Grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook pages).

There is a lot of snow in Stockholm right now. A lot. Some say more than it´s been in the last thirty years. The day before yesterday the underground gave up because of the cold, along with the commuter trains, which of course strikes hard on a city like Stockholm. Some people got angry, others got dressed and started walking.

I didn´t draw this from life, -16° C is below the limit for my fingers. I took a reference photo while walking to a station where they said the underground to town might work. Cold, yes, but it was an incredibly beautiful winter´s day.

17 x 11 cm, Uni pin fine line and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

In periods of less time for drawing, I like to do these “week drawings”. This one lasted for almost three weeks , but I usually try to fill a page in one. It feels good to know I have an ongoing drawing that I can just keep working on anytime, without pressure to finish anything, and without sticking to a certain subject. And after a week or so, I try to tie the whole thing together with colour or crosshatching or something. Quite fun, and a good feeling to at least draw a little, even if I don´t have much time.

16 x 19 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

Happy holidays! I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas!

8 x 9 cm, Uniball eye pen and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

Found a new toy today in a store, a water soluble pencil. I think I actually had one of those once, but I never really used it. I bought two, a 2B and a 4B, and played around a bit. I like the way the water smoothes out the graphite without rubbing out the lines completely. You can keep working on top of the washed surfaces with more graphite, getting much darker traces.

For those of you living in countries where poinsettia is more like a bush or a tree – in Sweden we buy them in December, in a pot, and every Swede get all Christmassy inside when these turn up in windows everywhere. People don´t usually keep them longer than a few weeks or until the red has disappeared – poinsettias do not fancy our climate, so the red leaves don´t come back.

17 x 18 cm, Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth “GIOCONDA” Aquarelle pencils and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).

I ran some errands in town this afternoon, and took a break in a café at Odengatan, where this girl was studying (”plugga” in Swedish) something very intensely.

I couldn´t help but trying to capture her on paper, it is so rare with people who sit still when you try to draw them!

Some news here on the blog: I have been trying to figure out how to get threaded comments to work, so I can answer the questions I get in the comment section in a neat way, and it seems I´ve solved it! So if you pose questions to me, please don´t forget to check back for an answer!

7 x 11 cm, Lamy Safari with Noodler´s Lexington grey ink and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (part of a sketchbook page).