A little something I’m currently painting for you.

The complete lack of good male reference and stock has left me improvising, and my principle of never drawing celebrities is currently in a grey zone. Ugh.

I’ve attached some extremely ugly and quick sketches below, to show you my planning process. These were doodled during ‘Studium Generale’. If nothing else, those hours of epistemology will have me painting walls and climbing curtains. (Or, that’s an exaggeration. And I do have a strange ability to doodle and listen all at once. Fancy that.)

I just realized, that I hadn’t shared this nice little print

Available through Society6 as both skin and case for Iphone 4 and 4S!

And of course there are also the good, old regular prints and posters!

Happy Sunday!

(If Mother Earth Was a Child… by Tanja Gotthardsen, 2008)

To put it differently, my drawings are often spurs of the moment. I do a bit of planning while drawing, using the additonal space to scribble down ideas, but it’s not like I start with a developed and finished idea. What I start with is a face. Or maybe just eyes, a nose or lips that intrigue me. I don’t think I’ve ever done a celebrity portrait, or maybe? Can’t remember. I quite like the freedom anonymity allows me. Suddenly iy is just about the expression and emotion, the aesthetic qualities and intriguing detail of someone’s visage.

The drawing above, however, took me by surprise. That was one of the few times, where a drawing just, more or less, drew itself. I mean, I spent 25+ hours on it, but it still came quite easily, I didn’t have to force it. The composition and everything.. well it was quite impulsive, but this one was done with a quite specific question as guideline. And that guideline became the title; “If Mother Earth was a child… would we treat her differently?”
Being quite fond of the environment, well it was right up my alley. And nature does offer such a rich variety of colour.

Those are the drawings I love the most.

Available as print at Society6 and ArtFlakes

Hello lovelies,

So, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy doing university-stuff. Enough said, right?

Ah yes, a couple of weeks ago, I received a wonderful gift from PaperNomad, and I’m thrilled about the concept. I discovered their products in October, and kept visiting the page, hoping that they would come up with an Iphone sleeve. (They’d already done sleeves for Ipad, Ipod and Blackberry) I left a question on their blog, and a couple of days later, an email appeared in my inbox – they’d visited the blog, liked what they saw and wanted to give me their brand-new Iphone sleeve as a gift! I can’t begin to describe how flattered I am

Now, the really cool thing about these sleeves is, that you can draw on them. Decorate them to your hearts content. They’re made of paper and cotton (correct me if I’m wrong), designed with respect for the environment (Mhhhm, organic materials… mhmmm).. just perfect And water doesn’t seem to be a problem either! For more on the PaperNomads go here! Normally I don’t consider myself easy to impress, but this caught me from the beginning. The philosophy is wonderful and the quality of the product is quite beyond my expectations.

I just noticed, that they’ve submitted the new sleeves to their webshop! Macbook sleeves as well! Now, mine has a nice little ‘Beta’ mark on the back.. and beta-testers test… and after my testing I say: “go for it!”

I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve doodled some more! I’ll work on it as I go

So, as I have returned to my studies, the blog has been rather silent (except for the Gotye song, that I adoooore). But do not despair, I have been planning a bit, and I have a bunch of posts in store for you. As promised I will be doing a ‘walk through’ of my latest drawing ‘In Flight for Freedom’, I just need to get a scan, that will show the lighter colours well enough. (Hurray, for working with the subtlest of hues..)

I also received something fantastic last week, that I will be sharing very soon! It would not be an exaggeration to call me ‘thrilled’ But more about that later.

Here’s one of my sketches, done a few weeks ago. I realized, that I hadn’t shared any with you yet. When I’m busy throughout the semester, I’m lucky if I even get to sketch, so I believe a lot of my posts will be doodles. I hope you don’t mind I do consider my coloured portraits to be my best work, b/w does feel a bit ‘bare’ compared to. But colour = time and even more time.

If you have any suggestions on what you would like to see, please bring them forward!

As I’m returning to my studies in less than a week, I’m currently doing a lot of reading – a thereby not a whole lot of drawing.

Here however, is a wonderful and in my opinion very inspiring little thing. As I’m a huge Peter Gabriel and Genesis fan, this song suits me to no end.

Have a lovely day!

Yours,

T

In Flight for Freedom – Tanja Gotthardsen, 2012

At last, it is finished! Or so I thought. I can see, that my scanner does not fancy blue today. I might have to go back and add in some more blue, just to make the picture clearer. The actual drawing has a lot of soft peachy and blue tones. And they’re not here… *sigh, head-desk* But I suppose that’s just another part of my process, that I might as well share. Spending hours on a swan that can hardly be seen. But well, it is done.

Caran D’Ache pencils on 130g paper (from my all-time favourite supply-store’s own selection) + white acrylics (that due to the lack of blue, can’t be seen.)

Opinions appreciated. I hope you’re enjoying your weekend

My inspiration board for january Or, this might be my overall inspiration board, with a few exceptions.

From left to right:

Mumford & Sons “Sigh No More”: My alltime favourite album. I’ve had it for two years now, and I’m desperately waiting for a new album. I would love to see them i concert, their music is the ultimate story-telling. Beautiful, rustic and entrancing. Simplistic and yet a cornucopia of sound and emotion.

Christel drawings: A Danish illustrator who was very active in the 40′s, 50′s, 6os’… I didn’t know the pseudonym of the artist until some of my (fairly older) colleagues told me, that some of my works reminded them of ‘Christel girls’. Some time after that, I actually discovered, that I have one of the books she illustrated (the first Christel picture), and I’ve had it for years. I think it used to be my mother’s. Funny, that.

Coloured pencils gallore: My pencils are an all-time source of inspiration. Colours inspire me.

Alphonse Mucha: His Art Nouveau ladies are simply stunning. His ‘Seasons’ are amongst my favourites, and there are multiple versions.

Birds: Actually most birds, but often those I consider aesthetically beautiful. Small birds are also favourites of mine, they remind me of my grandmother.

P. S. Krøyer: And the other Danish painters who, like the French impressionists, painted to experience the many effects of light.

Gustav Klimt: His use of colour baffles me to no end. (And yes, I adore Art Nouveau)

Salvador Dalí: An artist, that I cannot seem to get enough of. I’ve been to an exhibition, and even after seeing 400 sketches, I want to discover more. I don’t consider his work to be the reason why I sometimes do surrealistic drawings – but maybe it is, in some unknown, dream-like state of mind.

Just a few pictures from my work space yesterday. We have a very low, oriental table, that I love (we use it as our coffee table). So I basically just sit around on the floor, or on one of my poufs, snuggled up in a nice blanket. Here you see (atleast most of) the colours I’m using at the moment. If you want me to, I can make a post about my pencils and other materials, I do mix a lot. Or else, well I might just do that post either way We’ll see.

Filed under: Art, Gallery, Tools of the Trade, Work in Progress ]]> http://theartistichideout.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/68/feed/ 2 theartistichideout foto2 foto1 http://theartistichideout.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/the-current-project-second-sneak-peak/ http://theartistichideout.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/the-current-project-second-sneak-peak/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:37:02 +0000 theartistichideout http://theartistichideout.wordpress.com/?p=62 ]]>

Began drawing this on monday night, didn’t have much time yesterday, and I’m not sure today will allow me too much time either (although I did get a bit done earlier today). Would you like me to make a file/image with all the steps gathered up, when I’m done? I could try and do a bit of explaining, but my method is more impulsive than pedagogical

So far I’ve used 15-18 different colours. I love blending.