Northern dreaming

I’ve been a bit busy the last days, and now I will be out of town for two, so no pin ups yet. Well, I’ve drawn some, but there are only one or two might consider showing… anyway, that post should go up during during the weekend. Sunday, more likely. Until then, photos. One from one of the local cemeteries, two from nearby running path, others of Nina.

I think will try to paint one of those where Nina walks on the path. I like the light on those, and trying to get that right would be good exercise.

Next time some drawings. I think I will do some pin up girls, I’m in the mood to sketch something I already do well. 🙂

Photos again.

Two swans seem to have chosen the place as a permanent summer home, there have been one pair there for years. I suppose it’s the same pair, swans supposedly tend to come back to the same place where they nested the previous year. There are two different species nesting in Finland, the mute swan and the whooper swan, whooper swans being the original and the Finnish national bird, mute swans have been brought here by humans later as living decorations for parks and gardens, but they have been nesting here in the wild since the 1930’s. I have no idea which species those two are, I have never gotten close enough to see much more than two white blobs with long necks, which is not enough, not for me anyway, for identifying species.

Just a few this time. I tried ‘drawing the sword’ but wasn’t happy with the end result, will do it again so maybe next time. I can usually make about one or two which I am at least willing to show for about every four I draw. How happy I am with even them is another question. Well, I doubt I will ever be good enough for myself, what I would like to be able to do would be something like reproducing a black and white photo with a pencil well enough that you can’t tell it from the original photo. Long way to go before I’ll get even in the general vicinity of that skill level, if I ever will.

I like to use a rather soft pencil so there is usually some smudging. One of these, the side view of a woman’s face, was done with an ordinary marker pen while I was talking on the phone.

The three old photos: the woman is my mother, during the late 50’s, a few years before I was born – she was nearly 40 when that happened, my parents married rather later in their life for those times – the man my maternal grandfather who died when she was just a little girl. The cross drawn in the picture means that it was used in his memorial service. My mother died when I was in my mid-20’s.

 
Some Finns have sort of slightly Asian features, one reason why my people were classified as ‘Mongolians’ by some researchers back when racial classifications were the fashionable thing in the emerging study of human genetics.  Genetically we seem to have some slight infusion of Asian genes, one of the male lines was found to have some markers originating from what is now Vietnam, and having migrated this way through Siberia, if I remember right, but mostly we seem to be common European stock. Unfortunately for my mother she had those Asian looks back in the time when not looking purely European was not the best possible thing to be – she was a child and a teen during the 20’s and 30’s. She once told me that she did get some trouble for it, she was called ‘The Chinese’ as a kid and sometimes bullied a bit.

Okay, I think it will be drawings in my next post. Maybe one of drawing a sword. Yes, I know, lousy pun… 🙂

Some from the last spring. Plus one I played with when I was trying to learn something about the photo editing programs I have.

I don’t know – if you could combine some of those cloaked figures with a bit more dramatic background, like the one completely from behind and going towards the door with some sort of ‘castle in the distance’ or mountain or forbidding forest path view… Okay, I’m still thinking about what I might paint.

These faces are a bit older work. As I have said, I haven’t kept much, these I found between the pages of a book. I have tendency to draw pictures of my characters. The two of a woman with long hair in a bun are supposed to be the same individual, and her two brothers. There is also a younger sister, but her picture I didn’t find. I haven’t written their story yet. Maybe because these are probably my oldest characters, I have had them since I was a teenager, their story has turned out to be very hard to get right – with the newer stories the characters can change a bit if the story seems to demand it, but these guys are very stubborn. And persistent. I really do have to write them some day, I think that may be the only way to get them to stop bugging me.

The mountain view sketch is new. I might turn it into a painting, not sure yet.

Some more photos.

The skull is a replica, in case anyone was wondering, but it looks like it may have been molded from a cast made of a real one, the details look very convincing. I have bit of a weak spot for bones, I have always wanted to get a few real skulls. Maybe that of a cow, and a horse. I do own a sheep skull, unfortunately one without horns. If I can find the painting I once made of it I will scan that and show it here, but right now I have no idea where I have stashed it. There is no space to hang anything on my walls, mostly because most walls in my apartment are hidden behind book cases.