Happenings in the life of a young crow, Part 1.

Please let me introduce you the young crow! He is going to school, as you can see.

He prefers to spend his summer holiday by travelling (here on the top of Koli, Northern Carelia, Finland)...

....and wonder the Finnish nature!

But then came the gray, rainy autumn. Here is he heading to the school. 

He must be brave enough to fly over the big lake - the school is on the opposite shore...

- More about the life of the young crow later...

Techniques: ink (with an old-style pen, loaded from a ink bottle), colour pencils and MS Office Power Point. Photos were taken in Central Finland.

SPRING IS COMING SOON!

There are lots of problems in politics and economy all over the world - but I will still wish a Nice Spring to every one! Days get longer on northern hemisphere and light shall win!

A simple ink drawing at the end of 90's. Subject: Lake Simpelejärvi, south-eastern area of Finland.

A new technique adopted - accidentally!

We work ourselves as voluntary supervisors in KOPRU Summer Exhibition. I prefer the longest shifts, six hours, because I will then have time to sit, read and draw whenever no visitors are present. 

I started to draw this corner of our exhibition hall with traditional ink pen. You may guess what happened: I dropped a lot of ink from the pen onto the drawing! I got an idea to wash it away with a moist brush but found out that the ink will be spreading in a beautiful way on the paper! 

"Why not", was my reaction. Those grey shades were easy to create.

Finally I added some colours with colour pens on the mosaic floor (I have seen many coloured drawings by the Swedish artist Carl Larsson). Then I was all satisfied.

This will be my new method to produce coloured ink drawings. I start practising immediately!

Progressive steps of painting: "Sortavala Cathedral"

Drawing is always my starting point - also when painting. I am basically a drawer, not a painter. I will paint drawings - so simple it really is.

The idea to paint Sortavala Cathedral (situated in Russian Carelia, on the shore of the great lake Ladoga / Laatokka, not far away from the border between Russia and Finland) originally arose when discussing with Maria, a student of Orthodox church music, whose father serves  Sortavala Orthodox parish as its Senior Father. I have received some photos of the cathedral from Sortavala and, after some problems with the perspective, I finally got an satisfying result where the vertical lines and shapes of the building matched (as every photographer knows, it is not an easy task because the straightening of the lines will also affect the basic forms of the walls).

Now I have reached the first step: to draw the sketch of the cathedral:

Then I started to fill the shapes with acrylic colours. That is true: I chose the shades which matched to the colours of the photo - like working with a childrens' colouring booklet. The lines of ink still stayded visible.

Hours of active painting...Acrylic colours were much better than oil colours because they dried faster and corrections were could be done very soon when needed. In addition, they gave no odors into my kitchen...

After several nights' work the final step was reached: the drying of the complete, modest piece of art.

Complete Lady - and Half of Her!

For some reason, our home will take in more paper than it will send out. This mesh of paper consists of newspapers and magazines, advertising efforts of companies and salesmen and, of course, colossal piles of A4's. I tend to wait and let them rest all over our home until my wife asks in a very polite way (typical for her): "Do you think that we have a lot of paper here?".

After such an occasion I started to invent my papers and what I found: A Complete Lady and Half A Lady! These ink drawings were made in winter 2006 when I joined a course of living model drawing in the center of our city. I am not sure what has happened to the upper half of the lady, 2nd in row - maybe I was not satisfied with it or I needed her face for other purposes.

It is always nice to find something which has been lost a long time ago. Like now!

New technique for Sortavala Church - accidentally!

Two large ink spots covered this drawing last night when I was joining our local art school. "What to do?", I was thinking. Could the problem be covered in some way? My teacher Minna suggested that I can use acrylic white to hide the spots (still seen in the middle of the drawing).

This was the way I found a new technique for my drawings: first pencil, the ink and, at last, acrylics! Goodbye, for awhile, colour pencils!