An October walk

On a rainy day I took my bike to the recreational area that also holds my Dump. This time my bike did not follow me all the way up, I parked it at a safe distance.

As I approach the Dump they immediately showed up and make a stand, the Giants.  

I took another way then I usually do. This slippery narrow path is another down hill course for the mountine bikers – but there were none out biking today. Instead there were lots of dog people, and that made sense since it was raining cats and dogs from time to time.

On the flat top of the Dump all the high grasses where moved down. The mechanical things at the left hand side is the ski lift. The very tiny dot in the air in the middle just above the forest is a falcon, we saw it this summer also and it is very busy catching preys. Birds of prey are still quite rare in this region of Sweden so we are always very happy when we see them!

And of course, the crow is as ever also present. Keeping an eye on its realm.

I started to walk over the hill inspecting what was left of the summer. And as expected, there were very little left J

The rose shrubs were all covered whit shiny red rosehips, but some of them looked as they were trying to slip out of the red. Are there maybe some insects that do that, or birds?

I had sturdy clothing on so I walked out in the not-so-mowed area where the thistles grow. They were all very wet and miserable and also broken. Summer is definitely over for them. I also found what was remaining of the Iris.

I took some small pieces with me home and later painted them.

Further down the slope I entered the Giant Hogsweed forest. It was an unreal feeling to walk in amongst them. All grey-brown and totally whitered and broken, but on the ground fresh green new ones emerging.

And they are big!!!

 Crashing down.

 Appaling!

The artist with a block …. J

I did a not so good sketch of some Giants, I have to practice a lot more on them before showing. And it is not a very pleasant experience painting outdoor when it rains.

Besides the birds we saw, the wildlife also offered one roebuck and something squeaking in the grass when we walk to cloes. Some small rodent of some kind. And lots of dogs.

The Acorn story, part 1

Quercus robur – almost not connected to My Dump at all, but I’m sure it grows some small oaks nearby….

2014-08-01

It all began yesterday, the last day of July 2014, with a museum visit (The Dump as Art). I didn’t know what to expect but found myself looking at an unsorted mess of glasses, flasks and all sorts of glass containers. Each and every one of them had an acorn or a chestnut on top, and many of them was proudly sprouting green leafs.

It was about life and death and of ethics and morality in scientific research. You could adopt one of the acorns to keep and take care of, but they were all taken.

So now I’m waiting for the autumn to kick in so I can collect my own acorns and place them in little glass containers and watch them reach for the water – start to grow – start a life.

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After the museum experience I started to look after oak leavings on windy days. This lovely green leaf and acorns was collected in August. The acorns where bright green and had a swollen appearance, full of life indeed.

Oak is rather common in parks in Göteborg, so I have many places to collect acorns. Regarding the rest of Sweden the oak grows in approximately a third of the country, below Limes Norrlandicus, a biogeographical border that’s goes through Sweden.

In the middle of September the acorn started to look more mature and got a more long-spun figure. I adore the little ones that never made it to a full acorn but still hang on to its elder brother or sister. They just have to be depicted!

And a week or so later it was time to collect, the acorns started to fall to the ground with or without their caskets. When you start to really look under an oak you will see there is a lot of acorns from this season and seasons before. And there are lots and lots of caskets lying around. They seem to withstand weather and winter well.

I put the acorns in water to kickstart the producing of the sprout, and today was the happy day. Some of my acorns have started to sprout! You can see one at the far right hand side of the saucer.

 

The white thing at the left hand side was a tiny larva which apparently had lived inside one of the acorns. Really cute but I had to say goodbye to it. My apartment is not a good living space for it. 

I have googled which insects’ larva live inside an acorn, I think it’s a Curculio glandium. 

 Now I’ll watch my little acorns produce rootlets. I have to get nice glass containers to put them in. Do they want to be placed in the windows facing west or in the one facing north? So many decisions …

I’ll be back with reports about the progress from an acorn on a saucer to a small tree in a pot-

The last hot day of the summer

 On the last hot day of this very hot Swedish summer I finally managed to take myself and my bike to the Dump - to see how it was doing and what I have missed.

I think I have missed the most of everything! But that doesn’t matter since I’m mostly interested in the flowers when they start to fade!

All the grass starts to yellow, the cloves are brown furry little balls, the thistles are starting to spread their seeds, the deer’s are fully grown and not afraid of the humans and it was to hot even for the mountibikers and occasionall runners. So I had the place almost for myself.

I picked some Iridaceae sibirica seed heads and a tiny branch from the rose bush to take home, and later that day I did these sketches.

It was first on the third attempt whit the iris I found the right colour. Three (at least) layers of Burnt Sienna, carefully lifting out the highlights. Then I mixed Brunt Sienna with a little Prussian blue, the mix was thick and reminded of chocolate sauce – and with that I finished the whole thing. The first attempts I ended with a thin layer of Permanent Rose, but with this I didn’t felt it was necessary.

The rosehips are just a rough sketch, I had planned to do more with them but the next day they were to wrinkled.

After doing these sketches of the seed pods I jumped in on a full scale painting, which I’m very happy with!

My walk over the hill

This is what it look like from afar, my Dump. 

In winter time it is a ski slope and the installations on the top are the ski lift – but I think it looks like an art installation from this angel. You can walk up that way, there are a path because many others walk and run there. 

But I prefer the “road” on the other side, mostly at path that too, but it is possible to drive something 4-wheel (or ride a mountinbike) up that way.

The path is monitored by one or two crows, they live nearby and like to sit by this post. Today was a very hot day and the crow just turned its head a bit when I passed beneath. Just to keep sure I wasn’t up to any fishy business.

Along the side of the path up the hill grows Giant hogweed.

Lots of them …

I don’t know how, but someday I must draw and paint them, preferably when they have withered and look like this one. But so far they simply are to big. I have a graphit drawing going on of a part of a stem, when you look close they are very intricate and fun to draw. But it has to take its time.

On the top they had mowed the grass, but had left some Tanacteum vulgare (Tansy) by the sign that points out the mountinbike path. Since I had pushed my bike up the hill, I think it counts as a mountinbike …? Or not. I can go downhill without problem anyway … :-)

The rest of the area looks like this. Most of the flowers are over, the clovers are just brown little balls and not much else is flowering. The place is windy and exposed to all sorts of weather so I think that affects the growing habit and make the period of blooming flowers shorter.

I started to examine the few rose bushes which are growing on the southwest side, and they had a few flowers left. They looked very fragile and I left them on the bushes.

On the west side I found a number of bushes I never had seen before, I took a twig home and found out that it was a Cotoneaster horizontalis.  Never heard about it before, I don’t have a garden of my own, but after some Google searches I found out that it is very common ….

This is the Dump at its best, anything pops up here!

The Dump as art

Sometimes things just happen, so today the Dump came to me instead of me going to my dump. But this time as an art exhibition at Göteborgs Konsthall – Naturum - 2014.06.13-2014.09.21

But how?

Can this be art? Maybe not if art only is there to please the eye. But if art is there to ask questions it definitely can.

This huge pile (3 meters high) consist of leftovers from sales of ornamental flowers that wasn’t sold. The question the artist states is the sense of repeatedly buying new flowers and discard the old one, our planet is not an endless resource. 

My own immediately response to these and other questions is going back in my memory to when I moved in to my recent flat. In the garbage rooms I found a Ficus which had a severe outbreak of lice, and the owner had simply thrown it away. 

I took it up and placed it in the tub and gave it a good shower and an even better cut – both to the foliage and to the roots. This spring, 17 years later, I had to cut it back again since it thrives way to good J

But even if it is a rotting pile of dead flowers, nature is unstoppable. When I looked closed I found these small sprouts.

I’m not saying that we should stop buying flowers. But we can consider our choices and choose the ones we know we most likely will try to keep alive as long as possible. During the SBA diploma course I bought lots of flowers – and two of them are still here and are not going away soon.

Another part of the exhibition looked almost like a laboratory of some crazy scientist.

This artist had started to collect acorns and chestnuts, and then out of a whim she started to put them in water in various glass containers. All of the small plants are also hanging in threads (which is not visible in my pictures) and are in that way all connected to each other. 

There are also coloured glass in between and the artist is going to observe how the different light affects them. The questions this artist ask is for instance the ethics and morality in scientific research. For me this installation mostly brought a desire to sample some acorns myself …!

I also now must by a flower press!

One wall was devoted to pressed flowers, and of course it was again the ornamental flowers we buy for our own pleasure that was is focus.

The descriptive text under the specimen don’t state where the flower was gathered, but instead from which producer it originate, and then which importer and last which supermarket who sold it.

But, they are beautiful. So I am a little confused at this point in the exhibition. What do I really think and feel about this commerce?

There were also some sculptures and other installations that were harder for me to comprehend. 

But the video installation that showed six laptops by a lake that randomly surfed the internet until their battery died - but the nature around them still remained unchanged – made sense to me.

In one room there where a video of one single Streptocarpus going around on a conveyor belt in an otherwise empty greenhouse. It looked like it was searching for friends or relatives, reminded me of the initial scene of the movie Wall-E. One lonely sad flower … 

On the wall there was this collection of family photographs.

One can at least say that we have a complex attitude towards nature. We want to preserve it. To keep it as it is, so we can travel there when we need it. But in the same time we do our best to destroy it, often in the sake of making money.

I really liked being in the exhibition, I felt calm and relaxed. I wanted to go back.

But now I mostly feel sad – why are the human race so eager to make profit out of everything?

An artist block, or am I just lazy

The greatest block for me is my day-work. I am not that fortunate that I can make a living of my art so I have to go to work. I like my job, it is creative in a matter of speaking. But most of the time I’m to tired to do any art-work when I’m home at the evenings. And of course, I need to do some physical exercises to stay satisfied with myself – and that also take time ….

I know, just bad excuses.

So when the weekend comes everything needs to be planned, the grocery shopping is done and all plans are drawn and there should be plenty of time for me to sit down and paint. But first, oh this Saturday is so sunny and nice so we just have to take our bikes and go for a ride. Since they are road bikes the ride tends to span over many kilometers.  We settled for a route about 60 km long, but - that road looks nice, let’s see where it goes. And then we stopped for coffee and cake, and then a bath and an ice cream. We arrived home rather late and the sun had been shining all day so now my head was beating of headache. So for one beautiful day on the road I had to pay with one day of migraine – and of course no painting.

I am a bad planner.

So where did the dump go? Oh, it got to be where I left it. But all the sketching and studying I planned to do this spring and summer has not happened yet. Lucky for me it will stay where it is, and I’m sure that late summer and autumn also are going to be interesting to watch.

I just have to find time to get there.

But am I not doing anything? Yes, a little.

I’m working on a bigger piece where this dried Astrantia is one part. For the moment there are three participants on the paper, but it can most likely change when the Astrantia is done. A painting that is evolving for each part I put on it.

Yesterday I picked these Samaras (Maple fruit) – and I really need to find time to paint them before the colour is gone… They are great for small graphite studies as well.

And after all I manage to do a leaf study today, it’s from a Hibiscus. It was a huge effort, the Tour de France is on TV ….

“If you can paint a leaf, you can paint the world” John Ruskin

Colour theory by K. and my field kit

I started this blog post with the intention of describing my field kit. But ended up with a resume of my whole painting ”career” in order to explain why I use the colours I do.

I have been painting for many years now. I was not the wonder kid who did everything perfect at a young age, but I liked to draw and paint. And eventually I also studied art as a part of my elementary school. But since then I’m self-taught apart from some watercolour courses – so I have formed my art much at my own pace and manner.

This is not the palette of a botanical painter. It has evolved over a long period (>20 years) - starting with rusty machinery.

I painted this part of a pipe system in 1997, 38x53 cm. The colours are mainly Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Ivory Black and some blue I don’t know – probably the one who came in my first standard watercolour kit. I didn’t know anything about colours back then, and why they behave the way they do. I trashed lots of brushes, I sort of stippled the paint to get the rusty effect I was after. That destroys tips at a good speed.

After many years down that road I switched to insects. One morning I accidently killed a small fly without destroying it, I looked at it and thought “I can paint that…” I enlarged it and painted it in a quite imaginary style. Crane flies and mosquitos was then my companions for some time.

I added Winsor Blue (green shade) and Quinacridone Gold to my palette – colours with character!

After some years I discovered tube paints, and then also that each and every colour has its own temperament and way of behaving. The wings on this mosquito (2006, 12*17 cm) is painted with Quinacridone Gold and lots of water. I love the edges it make!

After a while I wanted to put my insects in an environment and I started on the path towards botanical painting. But in the beginning I only painted withered and dry objects. Now I only used three colours, Burnt Sienna, Sepia and Quinacridone Gold. And I did not paint in a botanical style!

These two Echinacea purpurea, 35x26 cm, was admitted and accepted to the The Nordic Watercolour Society Triennal in 2010.

As I wanted to include a green colour I found out about Perylene Green, and later on also added Perylene Maroon to my palette. Fruits of a lime-tree, the green has a nice weight, 20*20 cm.

And one thing lead to another and later to the SBA. Currently I’m struggling whit blending my old styles with the botanical style, and of course also mix in “my” colours. To let the steam blow of in that fight I periodically do some sketching in the field and also urban sketching, where I can do absolutely whatever I want.

To my surprise I now include colours like Aureolin, Transparent Yellow, Permanent Rose, Cobolt Blue, Prussian Blue and others in “my” colours. Raw Sienna is also a nice new friendship.
Rose for the Assignment 'Greeting card', the rose itself is 10*9 cm.

And now the field kit

So, what do I bring with me out in the field. I have collected 12 colours in my Winsor Newton field box:

Winsor Yellow – one bright yellow seems to be necessary.

Yellow Ochre – in the beginning I learned that this colour was a must, I’m not so sure any more. But it is great to have if you have Ivory Black and want to paint stones with yellow lava on. Anyway the sort that you can find at the West Coast of Sweden.

Burnt Sienna – one of my favourite colours, makes wonderful greens and are excellent when you want to paint rust.

Burnt Umber – hm, this one I’m not so sure about either, haven’t figured it out yet.

Quinacridone Gold – this is the colour that can do everything. Light yellow to rusty brown and together with Sepia, and Perylene Green and many others – just waow. You have to try it if you have not.

Sepia – I like the challenge that it is staining. You must be certain when you use it, once it down – it stays there. Dark and beautiful.

Perylene Green – I had a period when I only used Q. Gold, B. Sienna and Sepia – but I felt that I needed some more green. I tried this, and was hooked. I like to mix it with T.Yellow.

Payne´s Gray – blue, dark blue.

Scarlet Lake – I read somewhere that this was the most red of them all, I don’t know but mixed with W. Yellow it gives a good orange.

Perylene Maroon – love this, excellent to mix with almost anything.

Winsor Blue (green shade) – I don’t like blue that much. But this one is fabulous to mix on the paper with Q. Gold, then you really got the gold. But it is also a staining colour, can’t remove it. It is somewhat chemical in colour.

French Ultramarine – one neutral blue, ok.

I have two Pentel waterbrush which are ok when it comes to quick field sketches and urban sketching. I can paint for a long period of time without refilling them, if the painting benefits of a messy manner.  But if I want to do more detailed and neat work I have to bring better brushes. 

I have two kinds of sketchbooks. One Moleskin and one Fabriano Venezia Book, the latter is 200 g/m², acid free and can withstand almost everything. When you think you ruined the paper, just let it dry and it is ok again. I have recently acquired the 23*30 cm book, it is just perfect for me, it's the one in the picture above. The only negative thing with the Fabriano is that the paper dries very fast, the Moleskin is a bit slower. And it is also tricky to lift out highlights in the Fabriano. I also bring loose sheets of paper, mostly Fabriano with rough grain (300 or 600 g/m²), if I want to do several paintings at a time. Which don’t happen that often.

I have a tree legged chair, a Walkstool. And a foldable very orange Neverlost sitmat, if I want to sit on the ground or a wet bench.

I’m thinking of making a small tripod easel /table, even if my bike work well if I want to work standing up.

I also bring water, cold and hot, depending on the location I am going to, and instant coffee if I plan to stay out for a longer period. I am always considering my comfort when I’m planning an outing!

Unfortunately I don’t do as many field trips as I want to, I have a slight problem with too much bright light. So I always have sunglasses and a peaked cap on, the ideal is to sit in the shade and don’t look too much up in the sky. Maybe that’s why I never learn to paint trees …. And of course, the sunglasses distort the colour ….
But most if the time I enjoy the experience and the outcome of my effort! 

The incects never landed on my flowers, I have to wait and see if they will return.

Greenery

I haven’t visit my dump for over a month now. First things got in between, and then I got a really bad cold which kept me from both going outside the apartment and also paint or draw. Three long weeks that was. 

But today I finally found time, a quick breakfast and then of on the bike. I soon realized what a bad cold does to your fettle, I had to shove the bike in every ascent …, so it took me a while to reach the dump. It is one of the highest places in the city so it is uphill all the way.

All the gardens and parks in the city flaunts, but this is a barren wasteland – it hadn’t happened so much over the last month as I expected. The hill is greener, but that is pretty much all there is. Well, there are of course Dandelions so the hill is green and yellow.

Most of the green is the leaf of Clovers, just the leaf no buds are visible yet. There are also several kinds of grass. Some, as the Timothy-grass, is in bloom but others is just emerging.

I also found some small blue Veronica chamaedrys, but they were to fragile and didn’t survived the journey back home. I painted two sorts of grass and some clover leaf, the clover really take up lots of space when you place it like this. 

There were no mountain bikers going downhill today, but a small rabbit was going uphill the bike path. It strike a nice pose and did not noticed me before I was just a few meters away.

The yellow standards in the background marks the biggest jumps on the biketrack, the rabbit has taken position on one of the smaller ones. The green shed I painted last time I was here is still there.

All the greenery just behind the rabbit is Giant Hogweed, they are about one meter high now and they look dangerous if you look close.

On my way back home I saw some trees and thought it would be nice to practice my tree painting skills. So I found a good spot in the shade and started with the best intentions. Some tree trunks with light green foliage underneath and a small pond as backdrop. But I don’t know what or when it goes wrong. Is it the color in my field kit or is it the color I bring inside me? Why does it always look as if I painted a marsch?

I like the picture but it is far from how it look at that place! 

The name of the pond is ironic enough The black bog, but it is a really nice pond whith ducks and coots and other nice birds.