Spring is here – at least in the southern part of Norway. Yesterday I walked by the sea and felt the sun warm my face. The nature is awakening, and the forest is full of blåveis.
Spring is also when my painting classes are finished and the students go off to practise what they have learned. I hope. Below is the final result of the throwaway canvas, the canvas where the rest of the painting for the day is placed. I will try to make something of it during the days to come.
Yesterday I went to see the exhibition of Zdenka Rusova at The Henie-Onstad Art Center. She came from Poland when she was young, now she is in her eighties, and still working. She has been the head master at the Oslo Art Academy and the State Art School, and she is a nestor when it comes to graphic art. Her art is very special and drawing has been her preferred expression. It is amazing to study her work up close, – they are made of thousands of tiny lines of ink. Below is one of her pieces. Without title.
Drawing
Being an artist, it is important to be active and creative every day. It may be difficult to paint every day, but drawing could be the answer. I try to do a drawing or something creative every day, and over a period where I could not paint, I drew dots. Hundreds, or maybe thousands of little zeroes, which in turn turned out to be a picture. If you look closely at Rusuva’s works, she must have had a lot of patience when working on them. So it was for me too, without any comparison though, it became a kind of meditation for me to sit and do these drawings.
How do I make these drawings?
Normally I start with a figure, either in the middle or on the side somewhere. Then I draw the small dots and think about what should be next, and what would the image want to have close. Then a story starts to build up, and I compose as I go along. Once I started with some boards, separately, but then I saw that I could combine them, and after many, many hours, I had made 10 boards and they all hung together.
Then I became brave. I bought a large piece of foamboard. 70 cm x 100 cm. And I cleared a table and started. First I drew a figure with a pencil, and then I drew it with ink. And then the story started.
If you enlarge the pictures, you will see all the little dots that the picture consists of. I don’t know how many, but I know that this picture took several weeks to finish. Below you can see how it ended up.
This is it for now. Thank you for watching, and following me. If you should wonder if some of these drawings and paintings that I show in this blog are for sale, – they are. Just contact me. Have a great week.