Week 31 of painting project „One Year – One Island“
Midsummer – the most Swedish holiday – is something I can’t ignore, of course. The word „Midsummer“ is immediately associated with Sweden around the world, even though many other countries, not just Nordic ones, also celebrate Midsummer. When I began the project, it quickly became clear to me that I wanted to depict not only the variations in the landscape, but also the seasonal changes on the island due to tourism. Öland is one of the most popular inland holiday destinations for Swedes. This is primarily due to the climate (lots of sun, little rain, summer temperatures between 20 and 28 degrees Celsius) combined with the white sandy beaches in the north. The kilometer-long Böda Bay is particularly well-known – more on that in the next post. So I want to show in my pictures that you meet people everywhere on Öland between mid-June and mid-August, while the island is rather deserted the rest of the year. This means, of course, that from Midsummer onwards – the start of the tourist rush – my pictures have to include people. And I’ve created a problem for myself with that!
Yes, I can paint people – even very realistically – but not in a loose way like in watercolor! So yes, I can do cute illustrations, which would be perfect for a children’s book. But I admire artists who are good at urban sketching, for example. I SO want to be able to do that. But before you can do it, you have to practice. And that’s also why I’m doing this project. But I’m embarrassed that I have to let you watch. But since I have to paint the pictures in such a tight schedule, I don’t have time to practice beforehand or on the side before I can publish a better result. So you’ll be there for the practice – with every picture with people in it that’s posted from now on.
I know why it’s so difficult for me to paint casually: I want to keep control. Often you can find the problems you have in art directly in your everyday life too. Watercolor painting has a lot to do with a loss of control. Things quickly run together, drip where they shouldn’t, dry too quickly, etc. On the one hand, it requires careful planning because the paint is transparent and you can’t paint light on dark (which you easiliy can do in acrylics). So you have to be clear before you take up your brush and, what’s even more difficult for me, also repeatedly during painting, where the color will be light and where it will be dark. It’s best to think in terms of light and dark tonal values, not in terms of color. But somehow my brain doesn’t want to implement that. And – as every perfectionist – I am a detail nerd! Urban sketching is about – as the name suggests – sketching! So, loose hints instead of detailed illustrations. I know I’m light years away from that. And sometimes it drives me crazy. But there’s only one way: practice, practice, practice!
Now for my very illustrative and, for me, incredibly frustrating picture of the week. I know that it takes time to paint details, and a large group of people in a picture is really nothing more than lots of details. So, the evening before the Midsummer Festival in Böda, I sat down in the small square next to the church and sketched the place as a background. The Midsummer pole was already in place and decorated with fresh birch leaves and flowers, but not yet erected. That’s part of the celebration: the setting up and dancing around the pole. It usually lasts no longer than one or two hours. Too short for me to sketch, capture the people, and finish the picture in watercolor – I knew that. So I prepared myself. The next day, I sat down in exactly the same place, just before it started. Since Swedes are polite people, no one stood in front of me, so I had a good view of the action. As soon as the dancing started, I sketched people together in small groups, also standing to the side. After that, I needed time to cover some details that were supposed to remain in white with masking fluid. Then I started with the sky (I always do that first), then the trees and the buildings in the background. Before I could even paint a single dancing person, the party was already over. I sat there until almost everyone had left and then packed up.
Unfortunately, in my haste, I forgot to ask someone to take my photo of me sitting there. But you already know what I look like 😉 I did the rest of the picture at home from memory or – for example, the color of the clothes – I invented it myself. Even during the creation process, I realized that the figures were becoming far too detailed.
Even the people in the background, whom I actually only depicted as stick figures, still reminded me of a children’s book illustration. What’s wrong with an illustration? Generally speaking, nothing if it’s intentional. However, with a detailed background, I can’t just sketch the people in the foreground – the picture would fall apart due to two different styles. So it’s not the figures, but my richness of detail in the entire painting. I really want to work on this: more abstraction, more suggestion than precise representation, simply LETTING GO, and doing this on all levels: in the background of the painting, in the foreground, and also in life. I still have many weeks of the tourist season ahead of me, so there’s plenty of opportunity to paint people and practice letting go over the next 20 weeks of this project. And beside that I just have to ignore the fact that I’m so embarrassed to show pictures that I didn’t want to paint like that. That´s a personal growing process too.
Thank you for joining me!
